Claiming Noah (20 page)

‘So,' she said lightly, in an attempt to break the tension. ‘Enough about finding a job, we need to concentrate on something much more important. How are we going to find you a girlfriend?'

Spencer let out a throaty laugh. ‘A girlfriend? I'm not sure I have much to offer anyone at the moment.'

‘Don't be silly, of course you do. You're a charming, good-looking guy. I'm sure a lot of girls would give their right arm to be with you.'

‘Is that right?' Spencer asked, looking intensely at Catriona and leaving her momentarily breathless. ‘You've never said that to me before.'

‘Haven't I?' she asked, scrambling to think of what to say to diffuse what had become another tense moment. ‘Well, you're not my type, of course – I mean, just look at James – but plenty of girls would find you attractive.'

Spencer smiled. ‘That's nice of you to say.' He looked down at his plate. ‘Just so you know, I've always thought the same about you.'

James walked into the kitchen wearing pyjama pants and holding Sebastian.

‘Well, this looks cosy,' he said. ‘Glad to see you two are getting along.'

‘I should be off, actually,' Catriona said as she climbed down from the stool and adjusted her dress. ‘I have an early meeting.'

She dumped her dishes into the sink and picked up her handbag from the kitchen bench.

‘Thanks for breakfast,' she said to Spencer before she kissed James and brushed her hand over Sebastian's hair.

‘Catriona?' Spencer said.

She turned to face him. ‘Yes?'

‘You certainly keep your vases in interesting spots.'

As the front door closed behind her, Catriona let out a deep breath. What was that? Last night she had been ready to throw Spencer out of the house, but this morning she had practically swooned while he was talking to her. As she walked towards the bus stop, an intense embarrassment set in. What would James have thought if he had overheard their conversation? She remained flustered for the rest of the day, struggling to maintain conversations and concentrate on her work. That evening she said little to James or Spencer and went to bed early so she didn't have to question why being around Spencer suddenly made her feel like a schoolgirl with a crush.

Tuesday, 13 August 2013

W
hen Diana hadn't heard from Sergeant Thomas for two days after she sent the email about her encounter with the child in the department store, she decided to pay him another visit.

The receptionist at the police station greeted Diana before she had a chance to announce herself. They had all become used to her presence at the station. She was the woman with the missing son, the one who would wait for hours for Sergeant Thomas to return, often holding a blue shoebox on her lap. She would stare at the wall, not reading, not looking at her phone, for as long as it took for the receptionist to call her. This was the third receptionist who had worked at the station since Diana had first started to visit. Her name was Jenny. She had always been friendly to Diana, not like the previous woman who had regarded her as she would a homeless person off the street. Diana knew how she looked to people. She saw the woman in the mirror with crumpled clothes and bloodshot eyes, a complexion that had turned grey from lack of sunlight. But she didn't care. Her appearance no longer meant anything to her.

Diana stared at Jenny's pink-painted fingernails, which held on to the phone receiver. She spoke too quietly for Diana to hear, but after a few seconds Jenny hung up the phone and smiled at her. ‘He's free, you can go back and see him.'

Diana walked through the familiar hallways until she reached the closed door of Sergeant Thomas's office. She knocked once out of courtesy but didn't wait for a response before she turned the handle and walked in.

Sergeant Thomas stood up as she entered the room. ‘Diana, how have you been?'

‘I'm good,' she responded automatically, before she realised how false it sounded.

He gestured to the chairs facing his desk and she sat in the one closest to the door.

‘You've come about the email?' Sergeant Thomas asked as he sat back down.

‘I really think it's him this time,' she said, leaning forward, her hands on her knees. ‘That last one I sent you, where the boy is on the woman's hip. I saw him up close and the resemblance was uncanny.'

Sergeant Thomas rubbed his eyes. ‘You have to stop doing this to yourself. I promise you we haven't given up on Noah, not even a little bit. It's taking a long time, I know, but we'll find him for you.'

‘Did you even look at the photo? Can't you see how much it looks like Noah?' Diana's fingers were clenched so hard on her knees that her knuckles had turned white. ‘You have to look into this for me. I think it's him, you can't let him get away.'

Sergeant Thomas stood up and walked around his desk so he was standing in front of her. She had to sit back in her chair to look up at his face.

‘I did look at the photo,' he said. ‘And I agree there's a strong resemblance. But Noah was only two months old when he was taken from you, so we have no way of knowing exactly how he would look now.'

She opened the locket around her neck. Each side now held a photo of Noah. ‘Look at this photo,' she said, pointing to the one on the left. ‘Look at his eyes. Then look at the photo I sent you. It's Noah, it has to be.'

Sergeant Thomas let the locket rest on his fingertips while he looked at the photos. As she watched him, Diana considered how much he had aged over the nearly two years she had known him. The ruddiness in his cheeks had morphed into a pallid complexion not dissimilar to hers, heavy bags darkening the skin under his eyes. It seemed like searching for Noah had taken its toll on Sergeant Thomas almost as much as it had on her.

‘We just can't be sure,' he said, letting the locket drop from his fingers. ‘He was so young.'

As Diana opened her mouth to protest, Sergeant Thomas stopped her. ‘But I'll look into it, I promise. Just like I've looked into the other photos you've come to me with.'

‘Thank you, Sergeant Thomas, I really appreciate—'

‘But,' he said, ‘I will look into this on one condition: that you stop torturing yourself with these photos and these supposed leads. Please just try to concentrate on yourself, and your husband. How is Liam?'

She shrugged. ‘Fine, I guess.'

Sergeant Thomas put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Do we have a deal?'

Diana nodded.

Two days later, Sergeant Thomas called. She held her breath as he spoke, waiting for positive news. ‘We've identified the woman from the department store from the credit card she used for her purchases, and I'm sorry, Diana, but she did give birth to a son eighteen months ago. It's not Noah.'

•  •  •

Winter ended. Spring brought new leaves to the trees and flowers to the plants in Diana's garden, which bloomed despite their neglect. Christmas decorations appeared in shopping centres and supermarkets. Diana sat at the kitchen table one afternoon, flipping through a department-store catalogue and thinking about how she couldn't face another Christmas without her son, when she came to a page full of prams. Her first instinct was to turn the page before she started to cry, but then she paused, a thought taking shape in her mind. Once a baby becomes a toddler, and no longer needs a pram, the natural inclination of most parents is to sell the pram; after all, prams were expensive and they were built so well these days that even after years of use they were still in a good enough condition for another family to use. Noah was nearly two now and probably wouldn't be using a pram any more, so what if whoever had Noah put the pram up for sale? If it was the same one that had been taken from her, then it might be a way she could track down Noah. She briefly considered calling Sergeant Thomas to talk about her idea, but after their recent deal she decided against it.

With newfound resolve, Diana scoured the online sales sites daily looking for prams that matched hers, and every weekend she visited garage sales all over Sydney. Plenty of prams came up, many of them identical to Noah's, but when she met the sellers under the pretence of examining the pram before she bought it, none of the fathers matched the description the police had put together of the man who had taken her son, and none of the children she saw resembled Noah.

One morning in February, after three months of searching, a pram exactly matching Noah's came up for sale on eBay with the pick-up location a nearby suburb. She contacted the seller via email and asked questions about the pram and the child who had used it. Diana ascertained that the child was a boy and he was almost exactly the same age as Noah. Encouraged, she arranged with the seller a time when she could inspect the pram.

The next day, when she arrived at the seller's house, her excitement started to wane. It was a nice house, in a nice neighbourhood. Surely these people couldn't be kidnappers. She contemplated leaving without even knocking on the door, but the sight of a small blue bicycle parked on the front veranda changed her mind. She had to meet the man who was selling the pram, if only to rule out one more person from her search.

Diana stabbed her finger at the doorbell and waited impatiently, shifting from foot to foot, until she heard footsteps from within.

The man who opened the door looked exactly how she had hoped he would. Though she wasn't good at guessing height he seemed to be the six foot two inches the police had estimated the kidnapper to be. He also had the brown hair they identified. He was wearing glasses, which the kidnapper hadn't been, but that didn't mean anything. So far, this was the most promising lead Diana had followed.

‘Hi,' she managed to get out. ‘I'm here to see the pram.'

He frowned at her for a moment, as if something about her appearance confused him. She guessed that he was wondering why she looked so dishevelled and thought perhaps she should have made an effort to wash her hair and put on make-up before she left the house. But then he smiled and held open the door so she could enter the house. The pram was right in front of them, parked next to a wooden staircase with a white banister.

‘It's still in great condition, take a look. Is it for you?' he asked as he glanced at her flat stomach.

‘No, it's for . . . a friend,' Diana said. She glanced through a door on her right into what appeared to be the living room. She hoped to see a child or, at the very least, a photograph of one, but she didn't have a clear view into the room from where she stood.

‘Is your son here?' she asked.

‘He's asleep. Why?'

‘No reason. I was just wondering because it was so quiet.'

He smiled and rested his hand on the banister. ‘That's true, that definitely wouldn't be the case if he was awake.' He gestured to the pram. ‘What do you think? Feel free to push it around if you want.'

Diana took the pram and pushed it down the hallway, glancing into the living room as she walked past the door. There was no-one in there, but she noticed a series of photo frames on the mantelpiece. They were too far away for her to focus on the faces, so she turned her attention back to the pram. It did look like hers, but her pram wasn't the only one of that brand that had a blue pouch underneath. There must have been hundreds, maybe even thousands of people with the exact same pram in Sydney. And yes, the man did fit the image of the man from the CCTV footage, but tall brown-haired men weren't rare. She desperately wanted to see a photo of the child.

‘Sorry to trouble you, but do you mind if I have a glass of water?' she asked. ‘It's so hot out there and I stupidly forgot to bring a water bottle with me.'

‘Of course, follow me. The kitchen's just through here.' The man led Diana through the doorway of the living room. She stayed there while he walked on to the kitchen, which was at the opposite end of the open-plan room. As he filled a glass for her, Diana scanned the faces in the photo frames on the mantelpiece. One photo jumped out at her: a small brown-haired child, with thick curls and a dimple in his right cheek. The photo looked more like Noah than any of the photos she had collected of young brown-haired boys over the years. All except for the boy in the department store. Was it the same child? Those eyes; it had to be him. Diana was his mother; every instinct screamed at her that this was her son. She took a sharp intake of breath as the man appeared next to her, holding her glass of water.

‘Here you are,' he said as he handed her the glass.

Diana looked down at the glass, then up at the man. She searched his face for a sign that this benign-looking man could be the one who kidnapped her son.

‘Do you have any use for this?' the man asked as he walked over to the pram and reached into the pouch underneath. He pulled out a blue-and-white striped baby bag, the type used to store nappies and bottles. ‘I forgot we had it; my wife uses a different one. I just came across it when I was up in the attic the other day. I don't think it's ever been used.'

‘I've got to go.' Diana set her glass of water on the coffee table with trembling hands and backed out of the living room. ‘Thanks for the water, but I've just remembered that I'm meant to be somewhere.'

‘Wait, what about the pram?' the man called after her. ‘Do you still want it?'

‘I . . . I'll think about it,' she called as she fumbled with the front door. ‘Thanks for your time.'

She ran down the street towards her car and as soon as she was seated, with the door closed behind her, she called Sergeant Thomas's direct line. ‘I've found him! I've found the man who took Noah. He had my baby bag, the one that was taken with Noah's pram. He fits the description you came up with and the pram is identical. Please, you have to look into this straightaway.'

Diana could hear Sergeant Thomas's sigh through the phone. ‘You said you weren't going to do this any more.'