‘Fortunately, Brendan and I have settled our differences. Take Evan if that’s what you want. If you have the money and experience to care for him then go.’
Holly had stared at her, an icy hopelessness sweeping up from her feet into her chest.
Geraldine had touched her arm.
‘Look, I’m just saying we all need some space, that’s all. You can visit every day, of course; he’s your baby. But you can’t live here.’
Holly couldn’t speak.
‘If you want to take me up on the offer, we’ll find you a nice apartment and give you an allowance. Just until you get back on your feet, and then you can take Evan back. I promise.’
What could she say? She had nothing, nothing without them. She was nothing. She knew Geraldine’s preferences better than she knew her own.
* * *
They had put her back in the apartment she’d shared with Markus for one night, overlooking the River Irwell.
‘Back where it all started,’ she’d whispered to herself as she pressed her forehead to the cool glass.
The once sparkling river looked flat and black now, and the animated people who walked by on the bank seemed stooped and broken, like Lowry figures.
Holly phoned Geraldine constantly, asking to visit Evan, but she was always either unavailable or busy or Brendan was home.
She used her allowance to buy alcohol. Bottles of cheap white wine, which she’d drink before staggering around the streets searching for her baby, unsure in her addled mind of his whereabouts.
Then the allowance ran out. Stopped.
Holly took to her bed. For days she didn’t eat, didn’t sleep.
She’d hear the door open and bags rustling. Then footsteps, and the door would close. When she went into the kitchen, there was food in the cupboards, the fridge.
The doctor visited her a couple of times, but then that stopped too. She wasn’t ill, he told her; she just needed to get out, get some fresh air.
‘You need to start living your life again.’ He’d said it like it would be an easy thing to do.
One day she’d heard someone in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboard doors. She’d crept out of her bedroom and peeked around the door.
‘Patricia!’
‘Missus says I shouldn’t talk to you.’ The housekeeper had emptied the carrier bags out hastily. ‘Go back to your bedroom.’
‘Do you know what they did to me that night?’ Holly had whimpered, her feet pressing into the cold laminate floor as she stepped closer. ‘They’ve taken my baby. Geraldine said I can see him any time, but there’s always some excuse. They’ve stolen him.’
‘I only know what missus tells me,’ Patricia had said firmly, placing the last two tins on the shelf. ‘If you go to police, I have to tell them you asked for baby to stay with them.’
‘Is that what they’ve told you to say?’ Holly raked at her arm, her crawling skin. ‘Have you heard of DNA?’ she had shrieked, picking up a bottle of orange juice and throwing it against the wall. ‘I can prove that Evan is mine!’
Patricia was unmoved by the act.
‘Mister and missus, they want a baby for long time. Your boy, he has good home now,’ Patricia had said calmly, squeezing past Holly to get to the door. She looked back at her with pity. ‘You cannot win, miss. Best to let things lie.’
‘Patricia, please don’t go,’ Holly had cried, and reached out to her, but the housekeeper hadn’t looked back and the door clicked shut behind her.
Holly had looked around the sparse, quiet apartment and realised that everything around her belonged to them. She had to take back control of her life, otherwise Evan would be a distant memory.
She started to eat a little, to take a few steps outside and breathe in fresh air.
She’d wrap up in layers of mismatched clothes and spend hours looking at the undulating black swell of the river. Slowly, over a few days, her health improved a little.
One day, she’d caught three separate buses and finally, after a ten-minute walk, reached the gates to Medlock Hall. When they had eventually opened to allow a delivery van through, she had walked up the driveway.
She looked up and saw the bedroom where she’d sat for all those weeks, unaware that she’d been little more than a prisoner from the moment she’d arrived.
She rang the bell. Patricia opened the door and called to Geraldine.
She came to the door with a small boy of about eight months on her hip. He had soft brown hair and he looked like Brendan, but his eyes… his eyes were mirror images of Holly’s own.
‘Evan,’ Holly had whispered.
‘You need to arrange a proper visit.’ Geraldine had looked pale and nervous. ‘You can’t just turn up like this.’
‘But it’s never a good time!’ Holly had shrieked. ‘He’s mine. Evan is mine!’
She’d reached to touch him and Geraldine had jumped back. Evan began to cry.
Geraldine had shouted at Patricia to close the door, but Holly had put her foot inside.
‘I want to see my baby,’ she’d screamed. ‘He’s mine!’
‘Look, Brendan got sole custody through the court as his biological father,’ Geraldine told her. ‘You’re an unfit mother.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Holly gasped. ‘I can prove I’m his mother. I’ll—’
‘It was proven, on doctor’s evidence, that you are a drug addict. We have witnesses, photographs of you passed out drunk on the street. Take it to court… see how far you get. The judge will laugh in your face. Brendan is Evan’s father and we’ll always fight for him. You’ll save yourself a lot of heartache if you just accept that.’
Holly had staggered back as the door slammed in her face.
She’d stood there on the step for a minute or two as reality hit.
The job that Brendan had offered her was never as a companion to his wife. It had one duty only: to produce a baby who’d possess Brendan’s own DNA.
After that, they’d engineered Holly’s demise in order for Brendan to win sole custody.
Evan lived with his millionaire father.
She’d never have the money to fight Brendan and win her son back.
But that was only so long as she played their game…
* * *
Two weeks later, Holly was evicted from the apartment.
One day she was lying in bed with a broken heart; the next, the bailiffs were knocking on the door.
One of the thuggish-looking men had pointed to a pile of unopened mail on the carpet.
‘You’ll find numerous communications giving you notice in that lot. Then there’s this…’ He’d pointed to a notice stuck to the apartment door. ‘That says you were to be out of here yesterday.’
She’d gathered up a few meagre belongings and walked out onto the street. It was a drab day. The roads were busy but there weren’t many pedestrians around.
She’d walked into town. Her feet had recognised the vehicle before her brain caught up. It was a distinctive black G-Wagen.
Brendan had parked, just like that time outside Costa, half on the road, half on the pavement, on double yellow lines. She’d looked around but couldn’t see him anywhere, although there were lots of office buildings nearby.
She’d crouched down by the jeep, pretending to tie her shoelace. When there was a lull in the flow of traffic, she dumped her rucksack next to a large litter bin and lay flat, shuffling under the vehicle until she was directly underneath the driver’s side.
At least there was one benefit to being skeletal, she’d thought wryly.
You could get flattened… he could drive over you… you’ll get caught…
‘I don’t care,’ she’d told the voice in her head. ‘I don’t want to live.’
She’d lain there for just five or six minutes when she heard shoes scuffing on the asphalt. She heard Brendan talking on his phone and the beep as he unlocked the car. Next, she heard the heavy rumble of an approaching HGV.
Then suddenly, his boot-clad feet were next to her face, and as the rumble of the truck grew closer, she reached out and grabbed his ankles, pulling hard and sending him careering off balance and into the road.
The screech of brakes, Brendan’s scream… She didn’t wait to see the glorious result of her impulsive gamble.
She’d crawled to the edge of the chassis, squeezed out from under the jeep, picked up her rucksack and walked away.
She just walked away and she didn’t look back.