Little Face (44 page)

Simon doesn't respond. Of course he remembers it.

`When you arrived, I was on the pay-phone. I'd just phoned Briony.
I was in such a state, it was hard to think strategically, but I had to. I
even tried to send Briony a friendly but distant e-mail, saying something about getting together soon, to make you think I couldn't possibly be with her. I knew you'd look at David's computer.'

`We didn't find any e-mail.' Simon frowns.

`I was interrupted.'

`When did you tell Briony about Florence's fictional abduction,
then? On the phone?'

`I wanted to put that in the e-mail too,' I remember this as I say it.
`No. I told her when she came to pick us up. On the night we ... left
The Elms.'

`Why not tell Briony the truth? You trust her completely, don't
you?'

I nod.

`So why?'

`I don't know,' I mutter, staring at my lap. I really don't know. I
could have told Briony everything-about my sudden desperate need
for a deeper cover. She'd have understood. I could have told her. I chose
not to.

`You didn't want her to think you were crazy,' says Simon. `Oh, you
don't mind her thinking you're crazy now-post-natal depression
crazy, ordinary crazy, imagining your baby is a stranger. You were
happy for us all to think that. And then, no doubt, you'd have made
a brave and relatively quick recovery, and suddenly recognised Florence again-a happy reunion, though you'd never really been apart.
Was that the idea?'

Again, I nod.

`That sort of delusional madness is easy to own up to, isn't it?
Because there's no responsibility attached to it. It's helpless, not deliberate. You've lost your grip on reality and you're just flailing around,
hallucinating. No-one could blame you for that, could they? Whereas
a carefully-thought-out plan to pretend your daughter isn't your
daughter. It may be mad, but it's knowing, it's precise. Some might say
it's just plain wrong.'

`I wasn't afraid of blame,' I tell him. `You've just made me realise
what I was scared of, though. I was scared of explaining something
that made perfect sense to me, something I had to do, that felt so logical and inevitable, so right-I was scared of sharing that with someone else, even Briony, and having them tell me I'd lost my mind.
Because I knew, you see. I knew that however freakish it sounded at
first, it was the only thing I could do. I had to do it.'

`I can see the logic in it. Maybe Briony would have too. Crazy
enough to work, you said. I can understand that. You wanted Vivienne
to think that David was the one who was keeping her grandchild from
her, not you. When you and Florence disappeared, she was supposed to
think David had disposed of you and the so-called other baby just
before the DNA test, so that it couldn't be proved that he'd been lying
about Florence's identity.' Simon sounds as if he is reading out a list of
charges against me. Perhaps, in his head, there exists such a document.

I wonder if Vivienne could ever have believed her own son to be
capable of such ruthlessness, or whether she would always have made
excuses for him. `I didn't only want Vivienne to believe me,' I say. `I
hoped I could convince David, if I seemed sure enough. It was like ... '
I finish the explanation in my head: I was trying to make Florence mine
and mine alone by influencing David and Vivienne's thoughts, their
most fundamental perceptions, so that when they looked at her they
saw not a daughter, not a granddaughter, but a stranger's child. Florence would have been right in front of them, yet at the same time hidden. The incongruity appealed to me. It was how I would protect my
daughter, until we managed to escape.

`I didn't really want to tell Briony the whole truth,' I say. `Somehow
it felt ... too personal. There was only one person I wanted to tell
everything to, and that was you, Simon. There was no evidence to support my insistence that Florence wasn't Florence, but you almost
believed me, didn't you?'

`I did believe you,' he corrects me.

`You never said so. You never said, unequivocally, "I believe you,
Alice". If you had, I'd have told you everything. Laura, everything. I
was just waiting for that sign, to let me know I could trust you, that
you trusted me no matter what ... '

`Please.' A look of disgust warps his face. `That's a bit hard to
take, from someone who's done nothing but lie to me from the
moment we met.'

`I'm not lying now, am I?'

`I gave you no choice.' He coughs, sits up straight in his chair.
`Missing people, unless they're experienced at eluding the police, are
usually found. You and Florence would have been.' I realise that he is
trying to put me back in my place, to put a suitable professional distance between us. `Vivienne would have insisted on her DNA test then,
and the game would have been up. And if we hadn't looked into
Laura's death again, or if we'd reached the same conclusion we reached
originally, you'd have been back at square one.'

`Maybe I could have stayed hidden. The case would have stopped
being such a high priority. You'd have had other, more urgent cases.
You'd have scaled down your efforts.'

`You were staying at the home of a friend and colleague. We'd
have found you.'

`I'd have moved on. Sooner rather than later. But you're probably
right. I'm not the sort of person who knows how to disappear and start
a new life abroad, like people do in films. I had to try, though. And I
know the police give up eventually. They have to, because they're
needed elsewhere, on other cases, new missing people. Whereas Vivienne would never have given up, never. That's why I lied, about Flo rence being . . . swapped. I couldn't have lived happily or easily,
knowing that Vivienne knew I had her grand-daughter, that she knew
exactly what I'd done to her. I'd have spent Florence's whole childhood
waiting for my punishment to find me. I know it sounds insane, I know
she's not some all-knowing, all-seeing God-like figure, but ... well, I
just couldn't help feeling she'd find a way of getting to me, somehow.'

Simon nods. `So you tried to make sure she wouldn't care enough
to look for you. And there was only one way that was going to
happen-if she didn't believe the baby you had with you was Florence.
But that part of the plan was shaky as well. Vivienne wanted to find
you, all right. She wanted to get her DNA test and her proof.'

I sigh. `I underestimated her. I didn't take into account how much
she would want Little Face to be Florence. I thought that by the time
we disappeared, she'd believe me, wholeheartedly. She'd still want the
DNA test, just to be certain, but I was pretty sure she'd make up her
mind in my favour long before the test. And then, I guessed, she
would be almost relieved when the "other" baby disappeared. Vivienne
would hate to have a child in her house who she perceived as an impostor. She did hate it. And I thought, when she looked for Florence-as
I knew she would, she'd never stop looking-she'd look for just Florence. She wouldn't look for me and the other baby.'

`Alice, there is no other baby.'

I shake my head. Simon mustn't misunderstand me, not now. `I also
wanted Little Face to be Florence,' I say quietly. `But only with Vivienne out of the way, only if I could be sure she wouldn't hurt us.'

`You knew she was Florence.'

`Yes, but ... in my heart, I didn't feel I was lying. Everything I said
felt true. Florence was my baby, definitely mine. Little Face was quite
different. Little Face was the baby who might have been stolen from
me at any moment. Or I might have been stolen from her. I didn't
know whose she would turn out to be. Do you understand?'

`You disowned your own daughter. You're the best liar I've ever seen
in action.'

`Because it didn't feel like a lie! It was agony,' I say, my eyes filling
with tears. `Do you know what the worst part was, the absolute
worst? Destroying all the photographs, the only photographs of Florence.' That awful moment, when I opened the back of the camera,
feeling as if what I was letting in was not light but the worst sort of
darkness. `I did it, though. I had to, Simon. It was like I was being
driven by this ... this force, and I had to do everything I did.'

`You lied to me. I trusted you.'

I do not ask: then why did I never feel I had your trust? Why did you
never once say, `I believe you'?

`You have to try to understand what I did,' I tell him.

`What the fuck do you think I've been doing? I think I've done well,
all things considered. I think I've done pretty fucking well. Not perfect,
though, not by a long shot. There are still some things I can't get my
head round.'

`Simon, the details don't matter ...

`The details are all that matter. Why all that bollocks about Mandy
Buckley, from the labour ward? Why ask me to look for David's
father?'

`Because he was married to Vivienne, and they split up! Something
made him so desperate to get away that he didn't even keep in touch
with his son. Contact with David would have meant contact with Vivienne. I guessed-maybe wrongly-that he was bound to know what
she was really like, and maybe he'd even wondered, when he read
about Laura's death in the papers . . . '

`So we were supposed to find him so that he could tell us all this?'

`Yes.'

`Right.' Simon seems to deflate. `I should have known that, I suppose. And Mandy?'

I shrug, embarrassed. `If I was going to insist someone had swapped
my baby for another baby, I had to produce a few possible theories,
didn't I? I panicked. Things got a bit ... cluttered in my mind at that
point.'

`You made yourself appear less plausible, coming out with all that
shit. It's part of the reason . . . ' He stops, colours slightly.

`Part of why you didn't wholly believe me?' I feel vindicated. `Simon,
will you try not to be angry with me? Will you try to understand?'

I am still trying to understand myself. It is going to be difficult, to
produce a coherent narrative out of all this. All I know is that for a
while there was a baby called Little Face. She had a perfectly round
head, blue eyes, milk spots on her nose. Nobody was sure who she
belonged to.

Simon stands up. `I can protect you from some things, but not
from everything,' he says. `Even with the extenuating circumstances
taken into account, you abducted David's daughter and wasted a lot
of police time. Post-natal depression might be considered a mitigating
factor, but ... I can't guarantee it won't be taken further.' He is hiding behind an official vocabulary. Not Simon Waterhouse but a representative of the police force.

`What about our friendship?' I ask, wondering even as I say it
whether we have one. Perhaps this connection between us will evaporate as soon as our shared business is concluded. But Simon got inside
my head in a way that no-one else ever has. It will be hard, I think, to
get him out. `Will our friendship be taken further?'

He doesn't reply. We look at one another. I don't know what he is
thinking. I am thinking that the time will never come, for any of us,
when the last question is answered. There will always be loose ends,
threads dangling from all our lives-the unresolved, the unsatisfactory.
Florence has been born into an untidy world, and a time will come
when I'll have to explain to her that I won't always be able to give her
an explanation, that she won't always be able to find one for herself.
But we'll stumble on, she and I, into our messy future. And we'll have
each other.

I would like to thank the following people, all of whom helped significantly: Carolyn Mays, Kate Howard, Karen Geary, Peter Straus,
Rowan Routh, Lisanne Radice, Nat Jansz, Chris Gribble, Hilary
Johnson, Rachel Hoare, Adele Geras, Jenny Geras, Norman Geras,
Dan Jones, Kate Jones, Michael Schmidt, Katie Fforde, Morag Joss,
Alan Parker, Marcella Edwards, Anne Grey, Wendy Wootton, Lisa
Newman, Debbie Copland, Lindsey Robinson, Susan Richardson,
Suzie Crookes.