Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher Read Free Page B

hours but Helen had a nasty bout of jaundice and she ended up having to stay in for a week. She quite enjoyed the rest. On the third day, unexpectedly, Mark came to visit. He was on his own and was carrying a huge bunch of flowers – flame-coloured chrysanths and those huge, round, tightly filled blooms which she’d only seen before at village produce shows.
    ‘Brian said you wouldn’t mind,’ he said.
    ‘Of course not.’
    But she felt coarse, blowzy. Her breasts were spilling milk and her dressing gown was grubby. Helen was asleep in the plastic fish tank the hospital used as a cot.
    ‘So this is Helen.’ He set the flowers on the locker and peered in with a genuine interest, watched the balletic movement of the girl’s hands. She could tell he wanted to pick the baby up.
    ‘Helen Scarlet,’ she corrected.
    ‘Scarlet?’ He seemed faintly amused. ‘Brian didn’t tell me that.’
    ‘Brian doesn’t know yet.’
    Then they giggled together, quietly, so as not to disturb the baby, like school kids at the back of the class. Before he went he kissed her forehead and told her it was the first time he had laughed since Sheena had died.

Chapter Three
    When baby Helen was born Emma and Brian took on a young woman to help with the boys. Emma had been thinking about it for some time. She had had her eye on just the right person but had been reluctant at first to discuss the idea with Brian. He made comments occasionally when he came home from work and his dinner wasn’t ready or there were toys all over the floor.
    ‘Good God, woman. You managed a department of fifty people. Can’t you handle two toddlers? I don’t know what you do all day.’
    This was said in a good-natured way and was supposed to be a joke but she sensed real irritation behind it. If she asked for help in the house would he think she was quite incompetent?
    When she broached the subject, however, on her arrival home from the hospital, he was all for it. Perhaps employing a nanny was like owning the BMW. It confirmed that he was successful at last.
    ‘It’ll give me more time to spend with Helen,’ she had explained.
    ‘Bugger that!’ he had said. ‘It’ll give you more time to spend with me.’
    Claire was nineteen and had completed an NNEB course at the local college. She lived on the Headland which made her ideal. References from the college were good but she had spent the whole summer without a nannying job. Emma, who had appointed many staff in her career, thought Claire would come over very badly in interviews. Even now, in February, when she had been with them for nearly five months she volunteered little information about herself. Her silences were intense and deadening. She was tall and stately and always dressed smartly in dark skirts and white blouses. She looked like a waitress in a pretentious hotel. Emma thought it unlikely that this dress code had come from the college and imagined Claire’s nannying friends in jeans and sweaters. Though perhaps she was not a person to have many friends.
    Emma liked Claire because she was reliable and seemed to dote on the boys. She never lost her temper or raised her voice. She generated an air of implacable calm and was as obsessed as Emma about safety. Emma confided to the other mothers in the baby clinic that she thought she had discovered a treasure. The girl was mature beyond her years. Brian called Claire ‘the dumpling’ which was unkind but reassuring. Brian was at a dangerous age and Emma had heard enough stories about middle-aged men making fools of themselves with luscious au pairs to be cautious.
    At the end of February David would be three. Emma wanted a big party, not only to celebrate David’s birthday but the safe arrival of Helen. They had no plans to have Helen christened though Brian would have quite liked it. Mark’s influence again. Emma had insisted that the party would have to do instead.
    She discussed the party with Claire one morning over coffee. At least, Emma