‘That doesn’t really narrow it down,’ he says.
She surfaces to the sensation of push and fidget inside her belly, acknowledging it with gratitude. Still there then, not dead. With the knot at the centre of her unravelled, she can let loose her fondness for the baby. For the first time in Manon’s life, she is not moving through the world alone. She has a companion tucked inside her, her favourite kind of human: silent.
She wonders if Fly has woken in his hospital bed with the knowledge that he is free. Might they wheel her down to him?
If she could only wake, if she could only come up into consciousness, dig deep for some energy, she could lift herself from the bed and scoop Fly up and escort him home. Look after him, engulf him in her protection. But every cell in her body longs to go back down, away from it all, deep into unconsciousness for hours and hours. Forever. This is not tiredness, it’s the desire for oblivion. She has no right to be anyone’s mother. She hasn’t the energy to be anyone’s mother. How can you be a mother and still feel like a child?
A hand on her hand.
She peels open one eye. Blurry light. A chair. Dark shoulder, a jacket. Mark? She squints, trying to focus.
No, Davy.
‘Hello,’ he says.
She manages a microscopic nod.
Davy talks to her while she’s hoisted to a sitting-up position by a nurse and checked over, given a plastic cup of orange squash, which is too watery to give her any energy.
‘Amazed at Derry,’ she whispers, groggily. ‘Never known him to admit a mistake before.’
‘He blanched when he viewed the CCTV and read the Fairbrother report. It’ll be the same with the other pathologists, once they see the breathing – it’s pretty incontrovertible. I felt sorry for him actually. Derry’s full of himself, but he’s not bent.’
She has her head back on the pillow. She takes in Davy’s sallow complexion, his disappointed expression.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks.
He shrugs, very unconvincing. ‘I shouldn’t have been so …’
‘So?’
‘So fucking naive. I don’t know if you’re up to this …’
‘Up to what?’
‘Stanton was having an affair with Ellie.’
‘Ah,’ she says. ‘I had my suspicions. Hence the unchallenged seven-hour hole in her alibi.’
Davy has been tapping away on his phone and he now passes her the handset, saying, ‘Have a read of these. Texts between Stanton and Ellie.’
Ellie: I strongly suggest you get your arse down to interview room one and call your dogs off.
G: Got us a room. No luggage.
Ellie: Promise you won’t want me to sing ‘Five Little Ducks’?
G: None of that. But some of something else.
‘What is he, 12?’ says Manon.
‘Pathetic,’ Davy says.
‘Your idol has fallen.’
With her head back and her eyes closed, she tells Davy about Titans VIP and Dunlop & Finch, about Saskia and the Carlton Mayfair, Jade Canning, the cover-up. Her new friend Birdie.
‘We’re pretty sure Ross was stabbed on the train by the Latvian fella,’ Davy says. ‘Got off at St Neots. Too late to get any CCTV off the platform there, see where he dropped the weapon. We could have had the whole thing on film, in-carriage …’ Davy is shaking his head.
‘There often isn’t in-carriage CCTV,’ she says.
‘Anyway, Stanton wanted it tidy against Fly. Didn’t want it seeping into other areas.’
She feels the stirring of anger towards Ellie. How could she sleep with a man who was hell-bent on convicting Fly of murder? Even in the face of her anger, Manon’s eyes are closing, the pillow so soft and welcoming. Is this what her unconscious is evading – all the myriad ways she blames Ellie?
‘I better leave you to rest.’
She wants to say, ‘No, wait.’
She wants to ask, ‘Who was the beneficiary of that shell company that Ross set up, Pavilion Holdings?’
‘Go down to Fly, will you? I can’t …’
‘Yes, course.’
The darkness comes in at the edges; she wishes someone would come and move her body for her. Being on her back is insupportable for any length of time, the press of the baby against her organs. She musters all her will to heave herself over onto her side, relieved at the lifting of pressure and grateful to the attendant squirm of the baby telling her it’s alive.
She’s aware that Davy is talking, still here then, as she tunes back into the room.
‘I … I haven’t got anything else,’ he is saying. ‘I’ve given everything to the job.’
‘You need a girlfriend,’ she whispers. ‘Nice one this time, not like Chloe.’
Mark carries, not her, but her hospital bag over the threshold.
Amazing what you accumulate in hospital: paperbacks, OK! and Hello! magazines, boxes of meds, toiletries ‘to make you feel more human’ from Bryony. Apparently, all she needed was to sleep for twenty-four hours, her body’s imperative so powerful it required hospitalisation. Her body had work to do, the small matter of growing another person’s brain, and for that it needed total lockdown. She even had visitors, so the nurse told her, but she’d been blotto through the lot.
‘Sleep, rest, stay away from stress,’ the doctor said while discharging her.
Chance would be a fine thing.
‘Why’s it so tidy?’ she asks, gazing around the kitchen, at the worktops now visible – clear of mounds of clutter. Where is all the detritus?
‘Oh, I had a tidy-up,’ he says, setting the kettle on to boil. ‘You sit over there on the sofa. Are you hungry? Shall I make you something?’
‘It’s more than that,’ she says, suppressing the buoyant surge of joy that he has undertaken anything domestic.
‘There is something else. Let me just make you a cup of tea.’
Knew it, she thinks, he’s going to dump me so he’s done the washing-up to soften the blow.
He sits down next to her, putting the mug on the low coffee table.
‘Ellie’s gone,’ he says.
‘Gone? Where?’
He turns his palms up. ‘Shipped out, taken Solly with her. Her room’s empty, so is his.’
‘She wouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling me,’ Manon says.
Did she come, to the hospital? Did Manon open one eye to see Solly on Ellie’s hip, fingering her necklace, through the tugs of sleep? She doesn’t know. Au revoir, see yourselves out.
‘The probate information came back from Ross’s lawyers. The beneficiary of his shell company and inheritor of ￡9million, is Solly. Incorporation took place in November.’
She is staring at Mark, open-mouthed.
He hands her the mug of tea. She drinks, absorbing.
‘Well, I know what Solly’ll spend it on,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Balls.’
‘He does love a bouncy ball, it’s true,’ says Mark. ‘Hard to burn through ￡9million in Poundland though.’
‘How does a 2-year-old inherit ￡9million?’ she asks.
‘Via payments to Ellie, in a trust managed by Giles Carruthers. I think Davy wants a word, he’s on his way over.’
‘You don’t think …’ she says.
Mark shrugs.
Another draw on the tea. ‘So she’s gone abroad to spend more time with her money,’ says Manon.
‘How d’you feel?’
‘Bewildered.’
‘Want me to put you to bed?’