While She Lay Sleeping

Chapter One

Kate

The man who took my daughter has no face.

Never in my dreams. And not on the CCTV that Anna wired up the week after we moved into the flat. He’s just a blur — a cratered full moon in a black hoodie. In the jumpy footage that the police will play back later, he carries Cordie, limp with sleep — oh God, I hope it’s sleep — and places her into a silver estate, its number-plates covered with mud.

He is gentle and he has a car seat ready. Relief, tinged with a metallic sweet nausea, wash over me.

But I’m telling this all wrong.

I’ve dreamed about losing Cordie since the early days of pregnancy. When she was in my belly, the faceless man would cut her away, wordlessly, painlessly. He would reach a fist down my throat and pull her up and out of my mouth. He would unlock me at the navel and swing open a door to set her free. When she was a newborn, she would be under a heavy blanket or tangled in the bedsheets, blue at the lips and cold to the touch. I would wake in the pitch darkness, pupils wide and night-blind, scrabbling at the duvet and throwing on the light. Only when Anna groaned and covered her eyes with a forearm would I come back to myself and coax my heart rate back off a cliff.

As Cordie grew, so did my imagination. Sometimes she’d be sitting in a supermarket trolley, her legs swinging. I’d reach for something up high and when I turned back, she’d be gone. I’d be pushing her in a swing at the playground and she’d slip further and further down into it, until I realised he was pulling at her legs.

It was all part of pregnancy and the subsequent sleep deprivation, so Anna told me. When the brain doesn’t get to finish a sleep cycle properly, it tries to make up for lost dreams next time around — a little REM rebound. Your dreams become more vivid. The moment your head hits the pillow, you delve straight into the darkest recesses of your mind.

It’s just your brain trying to process all the change, Anna had said, tilting her phone screen toward me over the breakfast table so I could read for myself. Prah-sess, she says. Five years this side of the pond and she hasn’t capitulated to British English one bit — one of the many things I love about her.

But I need the rest, I’d replied, the ache of sleep silting my eyelids, tugging at my sleeves, droning on and on until I wanted to scream. It seemed ridiculous, to be sitting there, talking about the science of sleep, when I’ve been starving — dying, so it feels — from its lack.

Anna had reached out a hand towards me across the table, nails a perfect pomegranate. That’s a relatively new thing. Hang on in there, Kaydee. She’s the only one who gets away with that name, because she’s made it her own. It has to get easier, right?

Now there is silence.

What you want to know — what everyone wants to know: the press, the tabloid junkies, the doom-scrollers — is how it feels to lose your child.

I woke alone at seven-thirty — the equivalent of mid-morning since Cordie was born — with my t-shirt damp around the collar and my pulse racing. Anna’s side of the bed was empty. The sun had been up for hours and I realised I’d been squinting against the light streaming in through the gap between the curtains. Frown lines were etched in my forehead and rivulets of tension were creeping down my neck and across my shoulders.

Anna must be getting Cordie’s breakfast, I thought, but there was no sound. Our flat isn’t all that big, and the more I strained to hear Cordie’s high-pitched babble and Anna’s alto in counterpoint, the more the silence punched at my heart.

I swung my legs down onto the carpet, my head still spinning, and staggered to the door. Had Cordie woken in the night for milk? We’re trying to get her out of the habit now she’s nine months old. Maybe Anna saw to her. The nursery door was shut. We never close it, so we can hear when she cries out.

I pressed down gently on the handle — she wakes easily at that time in the morning — and peered in. The cot was empty, and Cordie’s bunny was gone too — a little rabbit head on a square of grey muslin that she rubs between her stubby fingers. The voile was billowing into the room like a pregnant belly, then drawing back into the open window. I don’t know whether I noticed this because it was the only movement in the room, or because I saw the smoking gun. I couldn’t say.

We live most of our lives superficially, committing little to memory. We aren’t prepared for those moments we will be asked to rehearse. We fail to lay down proper tracks, so they become fragile and flimsy in the retelling.

Did I leave the window open? Maybe a crack. Never that much, she’d have got cold around four.

She’d had a little fever in the night and the paracetamol suspension was still out on the nightstand, the sticky purple liquid pooled in the bowl of the plastic spoon.

My heartbeat fluttered a little and I called for Anna, stumbling from one empty room to the next, then back to my phone on the nightstand.

I didn’t panic then, because she would be with Anna. She would be safe.

I didn’t allow myself to dwell on the fact that Anna had been working late, and there was no way in hell she’d have had Cordie dressed and out by this time in the morning. It was all I had.

I ran to my phone, still stupidly shouting for Anna, for Cordie, telling myself we’d all be laughing about it in an hour’s time. You scared the shit out of me formed itself in my mouth, ready.

But when I reached my phone, my heartbeat plunged me underwater. There was a voicemail from Anna, time-stamped one a.m.

Kaydee, there was an accident at work, just a stupid thing. I’m in the hospital, but I’m not hurt. One of my colleagues is kinda… in a bad way, so I’m gonna have to stick around for a while. Call me when you wake up, OK?

There ought to be a word for how hope slips away from you — how you scratch at the scree with broken nails, begging to live a little longer in the time before. And another one — another word — for how you later resent the fool who clung on as possibilities slammed shut like doors, leaving the one grinning truth behind. The version of you who let all the hope seep in like poison gas.

I searched every inch of the flat again, and flung open the back door. Anna didn’t want ground floor, but it gave us a little postage-stamp of grass where we could sit Cordie on a blanket in the summer.

I talked her round. It was my doing.

I stood on the patio, staring back at the flat, the open window. The pots and the chintzy love heart on the kitchen sill. This time, the place didn’t turn into my grandmother’s old Edwardian semi. The ground didn’t give way beneath my feet. Cordie didn’t turn into a red admiral, and flutter away.

I was slick with sweat and my hands were shaking so badly, I dropped my phone and cracked the screen. I wanted to scream, to vomit, but I was rooted to the spot. Perhaps if I couldn’t cry out, I was dreaming, after all?

I waited for Anna’s hand on my arm, a kiss to the temple. For the touch that could break through the veil of sleep, but it never came. It never came.

Chapter Two

Anna

Ten hours earlier

The bar is a little way out of town, thank God. I live in fear of running into someone I know. Guys don’t want to talk on Facebook anymore, now that phones are tied to laptops and watches and there are little notifications everywhere to trip them up. And Cambridge is too small for this shit. Everybody knows everybody.

What I’m doing has a shelf life and one day it’s gonna blow. That’s what keeps me awake at night. Being recognised. Katie finding out. She’d never understand. I’d lose her, for sure. It’s too late to begin to explain.

And she wouldn’t want to move. She loves it here. The place we met, seven years ago next month.

But a lot has changed since then. A whole lot.

He walks in alone, about a quarter of nine. He’s taller than he seems from the pictures, sandy brown hair caving in to the grey, a paunch under his sports jacket, chinos and loafers. He runs a hand through the hair and looks around, before taking a seat at the bar.

He’s served quickly — an old-fashioned, by the looks of things. Suave, or so he fancies himself.

I’ve seen pictures of his wife too. She looks like a fawn in a floral dress.

I perch a little way along the bar, and order a cosmo. I’m wearing a white embroidered blouse that fans out over the bust. I have no idea what you call that pattern. Katie would know. Guys love that shit. It looks so innocent, so pure. Like you don’t know your own assets.

When he’s looking, I touch my hair. Women don’t touch their hair around guys they like. But that’s what the guys think, so that’s what matters.

Stick or twist?

He looks at me a couple more times, then smiles into his drink. So he thinks I’m trying. That makes my play super easy. Stick. No further moves. I pretend to fumble in my bag and hang it on the back of the bar stool. That’s the cue. When I look up, there’s a younger guy behind me in a plaid shirt. He places a hand on my shoulder.

“Sorry, love,” he says, squeezing between me and Loafers. He orders a cheap lager and taps his credit card on the bar as he waits. “Can I buy you a drink?” He looks me up and down.

It goes the way it always goes. He won’t take no for an answer.

Come on, knight in shining armour. Do your thing. Sure enough, Loafers’ meaty hand is on his shoulder. “The lady said no.”

I want to laugh. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Sleep deprivation, I guess. Cordie had a fever last week and we’re not caught up yet. And then I can feel her eyelashes fluttering against my cheek, her racing heart through the thin jersey of her pyjamas, her breathing ragged.

Not now. Get it together.

I pinch my lips like I’m nervous, while the two guys go through the motions, as though all this chest-beating is just anathema to me.

Plaid shirt slinks away.

“Sorry about that guy,” says Loafers, taking the seat beside mine. “We’re not all like that, you know.” His wedding ring flashes in the spotlights above the bar.

“Nah, but all the good ones are taken,” I say, pointing at it. Now it’s his turn to look nervous.

“Which part of the States are you from?” he asks, clocking my accent. “I’m guessing west coast?”

“California,” I say, and his eyes widen. I’m exotic, he thinks. Of high value. And I’m here talking to him. If he starts singing the Beach Boys, I’m getting the hell outta Dodge. Thankfully, he does not.

I tell him I’m here on a summer exchange program. I’m thirty, but I have a baby face. So Katie tells me.

“What do you do?” I ask him.

“Have a guess.” He has to be in charge, this one. That’s fine. You lead the dance, pal. That’s the key. If they’re short, make ’em feel tall. If they’re skint, treat ’em like a rich man. If they’re loaded, money’s not important to me.

To get good at this, you have to understand the need for validation, for ego kibbles. It’s a sickness that lives in all of us, to a varying degree — men, women. It swims in our veins.

I lean forward, elbows on the bar, so he can see the definition in my arms. I worked hard on that, it’s getting airtime.

“I dunno, a lawyer, maybe?” I say.

He shakes his head. “I work in IT.” A smile, teeth yellowed near the gums. “So there’s no way to read my soul.”

“I’m pretty hot on binary…”

There’s a snort of laughter down the earpiece and I try not to flinch. I shake my head imperceptibly. Fucking amateur in your plaid shirt, James.

Loafers’ real name is Mark and he comes from Leeds, though he’s lived in Cambridge long enough to tell a clueless young ’Murican — an innocent abroad — where’s good to eat.

He’s separated, he tells me. They all are. I look down and nod as I pretend to take this in. He’s at least twenty years older than I am, but this doesn’t faze him.

The script rattles along like it always does.

I’ve visited his hometown. I speak a little like this guy’s best friend and laugh like that one’s lost sister. One time, I even sprayed on the wife’s perfume. Same scent, new body chemistry. Remembering requires less cognitive effort than imagining. Get them looking down and to the left, not up and to the right.

I hold up a mirror to him, like I do all of them.

Perhaps that’s all love is.

But this is not love. And I don’t make it easy. Every time something’s on the cards, I swipe it off again. I don’t want them. That’s why it works.

Half an hour later, his hand is on my knee.

I can’t tell where he’s at, with his thinking. It’s getting late by this point. Is he going to suggest a hotel?

I want to climb into bed beside Katie, wrap my arms around her, and press my lips to her neck. I miss her. I feel awful even thinking it, but I’ve missed her for years.

“Can I get a hold of your number?” I ask. "You know, in case some of these great restaurants of yours don't take single bookings?" I smile coyly.

“Anna…” James’ warning tone in my ear. “Hold the line. We have time for a hotel. Let’s close this one off. Otherwise you’ll have to come back and do it all again.”

He can read me like a fucking paperback.

But I’m tired. So, so tired. And there are so many of them. Doe-eyed men, lost men, men who are trying to find their wives, but don’t know where to look. Sad men, lonely men, men who need to sit on a professional’s couch, not in a bar with me. Narcissists, sadists, sex addicts. Residents of the Dark Triad. All that dysfunction swimming around the bar like plasters and pus in a swimming pool.

Here’s what will happen. We’ll check into a nearby hotel and, while he’s in the bathroom, I will photograph myself and leave.

A few days later, James and I will present the report and the photos and the audio to the fawn wife. My hair will be tied back and I will be wearing no make up. Because most women want to cry on my shoulder, but some want to shoot the messenger. We’ve had that before.

Truth is, I want to tell them, you never win. By the time you’ve come to me, you’re either right or paranoid.

Loafers tells me playfully that I can have his number if I come for one more drink. So, the hotel, then.

There’s a fight going on out front — two young guys, practically teenagers, squaring up, bouncing off one another’s chests, spittle in the corners of their mouths.

I see it in slow motion. Loafers is buoyed by his earlier heroism on my behalf and steps forward to separate them.

One of the fighters, shaved head, black eye, shouts, “Mind your own fucking business, Grandad.”

The blade of a knife catches the street light and the second fighter, long lashes, low-slung jeans, staggers backwards, red blooming at his side.

There’s nothing but plaid shirt in my vision as James tackles me to the ground. He’s never gone full-on Kevin Costner before, and I cry out as he catches my arm beneath him. I think I’ve twisted my ankle.

The guy with the switchblade makes a run for it, the soles of his black leather shoes pounding the pavement as he goes.

Confusion spreads across every feature of Loafers’ face and he’s turning puce. I think it’s anger, until he clutches at his arm and crumples to the floor. Our target is having a heart attack.

James scrambles off me and shakes his head. “No, no, no. We need to go.”

“Fuck’s sake,” I say, hitting him hard on the arm. “Call an ambulance.”