Before I Let You In (16 page)

Eleanor nodded numbly and took the phone. The operator asked her various questions and she answered without thinking, things she’d have struggled to remember that morning suddenly surfacing as though she had them written in front of her. Vauxhall Zafira, silver, seven-seater, only five in use, DU54 FUP, all doors locked, only one spare key at home. They kept her on the phone until she saw two police cars pulling through the front gates of the school, the way she’d done herself only twenty minutes earlier, two officers in each. As she placed the receiver back in the cradle, her shaking hand misjudged it and it fell to the floor.

The head teacher, Mr Newman, a small, bald man with his spectacles on his head, was at her side in seconds. ‘This is PC Edwards. I was just telling him we have people scouring the perimeter of the school looking for anything or anyone suspicious. There are two people in the car park taking down number plates that don’t match the ones we have on record for staff in case the perpetrator dumped their own car to return to later. It’s more likely—’

‘Thank you for your help, Mr Newman.’ PC Edwards looked at Eleanor kindly. ‘If you could just take me through exactly what happened, Mrs Whitney.’

He listened patiently as Eleanor spoke, the words practically falling from her mouth in a verbal machine-gun spray.

‘I was only in here five minutes, maybe slightly more, but definitely no more than ten.’

‘So which was it, do you think? Five, or ten?’

‘Well, probably closer to ten, by the time I’d seen Toby off and waited for Mrs Fenton to return to the reception.’

Georgia Fenton had the good grace to blush, but Eleanor didn’t much care about her embarrassment at that moment. If she’d been in the fucking office, instead of having a fag …

‘Wait, weren’t you outside?’ She turned, taking a step towards the now frightened woman. ‘Did you see anyone there? Was there anyone around my car?’

‘I … I wasn’t out the front,’ Mrs Fenton stammered. ‘I was round by the kitchens; I came back through the school …’

‘Sir?’ The female police officer who had arrived with PC Edwards gestured with her head for him to follow her.

‘What, what is it? Have you found him?’

‘Yes, ma’am, we’ve found your car, with your son inside. He looks fine; he was still fast asleep and very much unaware of the fuss he’s caused. We had to smash your front window to get to him; he woke up then.’

Relief coursed through her so fast that her knees gave way and she leaned back against the wall for support. ‘Where is he?’

‘Well …’ The woman looked between Eleanor and the other officer. ‘It was still in the car park, ma’am, parked around the side, just out of sight of the doors. One of the teachers writing down number plates saw it. We would have found it sooner but we assumed you’d checked the car park yourself …’ She looked embarrassed at their oversight, but all Eleanor felt was confusion.

‘What? Why would someone steal my car and park it in the car park?’

‘Well that’s the thing, Mrs Whitney, there’s no sign the car was broken into. The doors are still locked and no windows were broken.’

Eleanor didn’t have time to work out what the fuck had just happened. She needed to get to her son, to pick him up and never put him down again. Without another word, she ran towards the corner of the car park where a crowd had gathered.

‘Noah! Give him to me.’ She held her arms out for her baby boy, practically snatching him away from the police officer who was cradling him to his chest.

‘Mrs Whitney, is there someone we can call for you, someone who can come and sit with you while we try and clear up what’s gone on here? We need to decide if Noah needs any medical attention, and if, um, if you’re okay to …’

They needed to know if she was crazy. Hell,
she
needed to know if she was crazy. Right at that moment, all eyes on her, she thought she might very well be. For the first time, with Noah safe in her arms, she noticed the individual faces of the teachers who looked after her son on a daily basis, people she saw every day, laughed with on sports day and parents’ evening. They were regarding her with fear and suspicion.

Her first thought was Adam. He was her husband and Noah’s father, but she just couldn’t face the phone call to tell him she’d fucked up again. She wanted things to be back the way they’d been when he chose her to be a mother to his precious son. When she was solid and dependable. When she wasn’t crazy.

‘Karen,’ she said, pulling her phone from her pocket. ‘Karen Browning, please.’

33

Karen

Karen pulled into the car park of Toby’s school, the same school that she, Eleanor and Bea had attended what seemed like a lifetime ago. A police car was parked haphazardly near the front doors, but apart from that there was no sign that anything untoward had happened. Karen looked around for Eleanor’s car, but it wasn’t in sight.

‘Karen!’

As she walked into the reception, Eleanor threw herself towards her friend, baby Noah in her arms. She looked smaller than Karen had ever seen her look, her face red and puffy, streaked with tears. She folded them both into her arms, ignoring the police officers who were sitting on the visitors’ chairs.

‘What’s happened, hun?’ she asked into Eleanor’s hair. She held her at arm’s length to look at her properly. She looked terrible, her clothes crumpled and not entirely clean, dark purple circles under her eyes.

‘Someone stole my car with Noah inside! I mean, they moved it.’ She dropped her head and fell silent. ‘I don’t really know what I mean, but I think I’m in trouble.’

Karen looked over at the police officer who had stood to greet her, a middle-aged woman whose dull brown hair was pulled into a stern ponytail, though her face looked kind enough.

‘What’s happened here? Have you found out who took my friend’s car?’

The woman shot a look at her companion, a young male totally unequipped for dealing with hysterical females.

‘Mrs Browning?’

‘Dr Browning.’

‘Of course, I’m sorry. Could we maybe talk outside?’

Karen glanced back at Eleanor. ‘Will you be okay? I’ll find out what’s going on and take care of this.’

Eleanor looked reluctant to let her go now that she had a friendly face in the room, and Karen wasn’t surprised. Someone had stolen her car with her son inside! Why were they treating her like the criminal? She touched her friend’s arm reassuringly before following the female officer outside.

‘Dr Browning, I gather you are Mrs Whitney’s psychiatrist?’

‘I’m
a
psychiatrist, I’m not
Eleanor’s
psychiatrist. Eleanor doesn’t need therapy; she needs a good night’s sleep.’

‘Okay, well we’re trying to determine if Eleanor is all right to take her son home.’

‘She’s just shocked. Wouldn’t you be if you’d had your car stolen with your son inside?’

‘That’s just it, Dr Browning, Eleanor’s car wasn’t stolen. It was found in the car park, where she left it. Just around the corner from where she was looking.’

That was when it dawned on Karen the seriousness of the situation Eleanor was in. Not only had she left her son in the car where she couldn’t possibly see him from the doors of the school, but she’d then forgotten where she’d parked the car and sparked a manhunt for Noah and an imaginary car thief.

‘Okay, so she forgot where she’d left her car and panicked; that could happen to anyone. Especially anyone with a three-month-old baby. And perhaps she shouldn’t have left Noah, but if she hadn’t forgotten where she’d parked the car, she wouldn’t have been out of sight for long.’

The policewoman sighed. ‘Look …’ She hesitated.

‘Karen,’ she offered.

‘Look, Karen. We’re not worried about Eleanor’s safety, or the safety of her son. It’s an easy mistake to make, and as you say, she panicked – I’m sure I would have done the same.’ Looking at her, Karen thought that probably wasn’t true. ‘We just wanted to make sure she wasn’t going home on her own in a state, to dwell on what’s happened here and make herself feel worse.’

Karen let out a relieved breath. ‘Thank you. I’ll take her home; I’ll look after her.’

‘But …’ Oh Christ, Karen hated that
but
. ‘I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t inform someone at social services what happened here.’

‘Is that really necessary? You said yourself it was an easy mistake.’

‘Yes, and I do believe that. However, if something were to happen to Eleanor or her son, it’d be my neck on the line. They’re going to want to have a quick chat with her, just to check everything is okay. She needs to be prepared for that.’

‘Fine.’ Karen turned to look back at where Eleanor was sitting, clinging on to Noah as though someone might walk in at any second and take him away from her. ‘Of course you need to do your job. Just let me take her home and prepare her.’

‘That’s exactly why we called you. Support your friend, Karen. I get the feeling she needs that more than anything at the moment.’

‘What did they say?’ Eleanor asked as they walked across the car park to her damaged car. ‘Are they going to take Noah?’

Karen shook her head. ‘They said it was a simple mistake, but they have to let someone at social services know. It’s part of their job.’

Eleanor looked as though she might burst into tears again. ‘I knew it. I knew she hated me, that female one. She looked at me like I was shit on her shoe.’

Karen stopped, and turned to face her full on. ‘She doesn’t hate you, she was worried about you. Why did you park so far away, Els? When you had to leave the car?’

‘I didn’t park there.’ Her voice was low and urgent. ‘I had to pretend I did to get them to stop treating me like I was mad, but I know, Karen, I parked exactly where I always park. Toby will tell you. I could see the car from the school.’

‘But you didn’t see anyone move it?’

‘I was waiting for that bloody secretary to finish her fag. I went into the reception, but I was only gone for a few minutes! Someone did this to make me feel like I was losing my mind. I swear, Karen, you’ve got to believe me.’

‘I do,’ Karen promised, and the look of relief on her friend’s face told her it was the right thing to say. ‘I’ll look after you. I promise.’

34

Eleanor

‘Oh come on, Eleanor, who the hell would want to steal your car to move it fifty bloody yards? It doesn’t make any sense! And how could you be so fucking stupid as to leave Noah unattended? What if the car really had been stolen?’

‘It
was
stolen, Adam; you’re not listening to me!’ Eleanor tried to keep her voice low to avoid waking Noah, but she could feel panic rising in her chest again. ‘You heard Toby! He told you we’d parked close to the school!’

What he’d actually said, under close questioning from both Eleanor and Karen, and with a shrug of his shoulders, was that he was ‘pretty sure’ they’d parked in their usual spot. But it had been a long day, his friends had all been talking about the police coming to school to arrest his mum and the shine had been taken right off his amazing project. Once again Eleanor was the bad guy, and she could tell he was in no mood to jump to her defence.

‘Toby doesn’t remember what he had for breakfast,’ Adam snorted. ‘Assuming you remembered to give him breakfast.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

His face was bright red from the effort of not yelling, but despite his quiet tone his words tore at her chest. ‘You’ve not exactly been yourself lately, Els. You always seem so frazzled, you lose things on a daily basis, you don’t know if you’re coming or going. And now this …’ He waved his arm. ‘We need to decide what we’re going to say when social services turn up.’

‘What do you mean, what we’re going to say? I’m going to tell them the truth. Someone moved the car, Adam, whether you believe me or not.’

He sighed. ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you, sweetheart; what I’m saying is that it sounds pretty unbelievable. And if it sounds unbelievable to me, it’s going to sound crazy to them.’

She flinched, and to his credit, he noticed.

‘I’m not calling you crazy, Els, I just think you should tell them you made a mistake. Surely that’s going to sound better than some conspiracy theory that someone’s out to get you?’

Eleanor nodded, defeated. He was right. What she was saying sounded crazy. And she believed it a hundred per cent, which meant
she
was crazy. But there was no way she was going to let anyone else know that.

35

Tell me about the day Eleanor lost Noah …

I’ve told you what happened. She insisted it was a mistake. That she’d forgotten where she parked.

Did you believe her?

It didn’t seem like her. And she was so insistent when I got to the school that she’d parked in her normal space – I believed her then so I didn’t know what to believe when she changed her story. She’d been so distracted, so unlike her usual self.

Where were you when the police called you?

I was at work.

The police said you arrived very quickly.

They said it was urgent. Are you going to arrest me for speeding?

It was important to you to get to Eleanor quickly. To be there for her.

Is that a question?

Would you disagree?

No. Wouldn’t you want to get to a friend who had lost her child?

But you didn’t know that at the time.

I knew it was urgent. That was enough.

Didn’t you ever worry about putting your friends’ needs before your own? Leaving work at their slightest call, getting embroiled in their squabbles?

Not at all. They needed me. It’s what any good friend would do.

At your age? Some would say they are adults now, old enough to take care of themselves …

Well they aren’t. They needed me.

And now? Do they need you now?

I think we’re done for today.

36

From my vantage point behind the large tree outside the gates I watched Eleanor’s car enter the school. I waited as it came to a stop in its usual spot and watched Eleanor climb out. Toby got out of the front passenger side, then hauled his project out, nearly letting it topple to the ground under its own weight. I’d considered moving it close to the log burner in their front room when I’d spied it through the window last night, letting the heat melt the plastic tubes and rendering the hours they had spent on it useless, but I was glad I hadn’t now. Toby’s disappointment at his mother’s carelessness would have been nothing compared to Eleanor’s confusion at losing her car, the panic I could imagine in her eyes when she returned with the baby to find they had no way of getting home. But it turned out better than I could have imagined. Because when Eleanor left the car to help Toby carry the project into the school, she gave a furtive look around before locking the car door with Noah still inside.