From the Cradle Read Free

‘Relax, Hel. If there was a problem Alice would’ve called. You know she would. She might be a lazy madam but you know she adores Frankie. Besides, there’s no way she’d deal with a pile of vomit or too much screaming on her own if she knew we were only te n minutes away, so we can be certain that nothing’s amiss. Why are you so jumpy all of a sudden? You haven’t been this paranoid since she was a baby!’
    Helen felt annoyed with him again. ‘You know why. Liam McConnell and Izzy Hartley, that’s why.’
    Liam and Izzy were the names of the two stolen children. Helen’s friend Elena took her child to the same nursery Liam had been enrolled at, and knew his mother. The poor woman was a total wreck apparently, dragging herself around hollow-eyed with Prozac, on permanent tenterhooks for the smallest morsel of news of her son, news that so far – almost a week in – hadn’t materialized. Both children had vanished seemingly into thin air, within two days of one another.
    Sean bristled slightly at the implied criticism, as he always did when it came to his daughter. ‘Alice would never let that happen.’
    Helen poured them both another glass of wine, to try and dispel the image of little dark-haired chubby bespectacled Lia m – his photo was all over the papers – being unstrapped from his car seat and removed. CCTV in the supermarket car park showed a single glimpse of a muffled-up person carrying him away, but there was no trace of where and no indication whatsoever of who it was. Liam’s mum had only nipped back into the supermarket to retrieve some dry cleaning she’d forgotten. She was gone barely t wo minutes.
    Sean gave Helen one of those long, impenetrable gazes where he could be thinking anything from ‘This is the woman I really, really love’, to ‘Wow, you make my life a living hell.’ She didn’t really think it was the latter, but by the same token, she did find him unreadable sometimes. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel loved by him – perhaps just not loved as much as she’d have liked. Not loved as much as he’d loved Alice’s mother, all those years ago. Helen had given up fishing for information on that score. She had long realized that the shutters clanged down the moment she even mentioned the woman’s name. The dreaded dead perfect first wife – pretty much impossible to live up to that ideal, so Helen had stopped trying, and Sean never spoke of her.
    ‘I just can’t stop thinking about those children – both younger than Frankie. Hardly more than babies . . . Let’s change the subject – what shall we talk about?’
    Sean smiled properly at her. His smile could still make her heart quicken. He took her hand across the table, sliding her phone into his pocket so she couldn’t keep checking it. ‘There was something I wanted to run by you, actually,’ he said, and she was puzzled at the slightly shy tone of his voice.
    ‘You’re not going to beg me to let you buy a new car are you?’
    ‘No . . .’ He took a deep breath and gazed into her eyes. ‘Hel, I know I was joking about the nightmare of having two screaming babies, but Frankie’s almost four now and—’
    She felt a sudden sharp pain of love and excitement in her belly.
    ‘—do you think it’s time we had another one? It would be so nice for Frankie to have a little brother or sister. Alice would love it too.’
    Helen’s smile broadened into a beam, and she squeezed his hand tightly to stop tears of joy spilling down her cheeks. He’d been anti the idea of a second child for so long that she’d given up hinting.
    ‘Really? You’re ready?’ Every atom of her danced when he nodded slowly back.
    ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Actually I think I am.’

    They were a lot later getting home than Helen had originally told Alice they would be. She’d insisted that they celebrate with two glasses of champagne, and after they paid the bill and left, they decided to walk the long way home. They went through