She returned to the kitchen where Azhar sat, staring at nothing. She said to him, “Azhar, you’re her father. You have a claim upon her. She’s lived with you since she was born. You’ve a building full of people right here who’re going to testify to that. The police will ask them and they’ll say you’re the parent of record. Hadiyyah’s school will say that as well. Everyone— ”
“My name is not on her birth certificate, Barbara. It never was. Angelina would not put it on. It was the price I paid for not divorcing my wife.”
Barbara swallowed. She took a moment. She forged ahead. “All right. We’ll work with that. It doesn’t matter. There are DNA tests. She’s half you, Azhar, and we’ll be able to prove it.”
“In what manner without her here? And what does it matter when she is with her mother? Angelina defies no law. She defies no court order. She does not fly in the face of what a judge has told her must be the way in which Hadiyyah is shared. She’s gone. She’s taken my daughter with her, and they are not returning.”
He looked at Barbara and his eyes were so pained that Barbara couldn’t hold his gaze. She said uselessly, “No, no. That’s not how it is.”
But he put his forehead against his upraised fists and he hit himself. Once, twice, and Barbara grabbed his arm. She said, “Don’t. We’ll find her. I swear we’ll find her. I’m going to phone now. I’m ringing some people. There are ways. There are means. She’s not lost to you and you must believe that. Will you believe it? Will you hang on?”
“I’ve nothing to hang on to,” he told her, “and I’ve less to hang on for.”
CHALK FARM
LONDON
Who could she blame? Barbara asked herself. Who on God’s bloody earth could she possibly blame? She had to blame someone because if she could not find a person to wear the mantle of guilt, she was going to have to blame herself. For being seduced, for being awed, for being stupid, for being—
It all came down to Isabelle Ardery, she decided. If the bloody superintendent hadn’t ordered, insisted, recommended strongly that Barbara alter her appearance, none of this would have happened because Barbara wouldn’t have come to know Angelina Upman in the first place so she would have maintained a distance from her that might have allowed her to see and to understand… But what, really, did that matter because Angelina had intended to take her daughter away from the very first, hadn’t she, and that had been the argument Barbara had heard that day between Angelina and Azhar. It had been her threat and his reaction to her threat. Azhar had lost his temper, as any father might, in the face of her declaration that she would take away his child. But when Angelina had explained the cause of the argument to Barbara, Barbara had stood there in her little shop of deceit, and she’d bought up her lies, every one of them.
She didn’t want to leave Azhar alone, but she had no choice once she decided to make her phone call. She didn’t want to do it in his presence because she wasn’t sure of the outcome despite her words of assurance to the man. She said, “I want you to lie down, Azhar. I want you to try to rest. I’ll be back. I promise you. You wait here. I’ll be gone a little while because I have some phone calls to make and when I return, I’ll have a plan. But in the meantime I have to phone… Azhar, are you listening? Can you hear me?” She wanted to ring someone to come to him and to comfort him in some way, but she knew there was no one other than herself. All she could do was get him into his bedroom, cover him with a blanket, and promise she would return as soon as she could.
She hurried to her bungalow to place the call. There was only one person she could think of who might be of help, who would be able to think clearly in this situation, and she rang his mobile.
Lynley said, “Yes? Barbara? Is that you?” over a tremendous roaring of noise and music in the background. Barbara felt a surge of gratitude and she said, “Sir, sir, yes. I need— ”
He said, “Barbara, I can’t actually hear you. I’m going to have to— ”
His voice was overwhelmed by the cheers of a crowd. Where in God’s name was he? she wondered. At a football game?
He said as if in answer, “I’m at the exhibition centre. Earl’s Court…” More cheers and roaring and Lynley saying to someone, “Charlie, has she gone out of bounds? My God, the woman’s aggressive. Can you tell what’s happened?” Someone said something in reply and this was followed by Lynley’s laughter. Lynley laughing, Barbara realised, as she’d not heard him laugh since before last February, when it had seemed his laughter had died forever. He said into his mobile, “Roller derby, Barbara,” and she could barely hear him over the background noise although she managed to catch “…that woman from Cornwall” and she thought, Is he on a date? With a woman from Cornwall? What woman from Cornwall? And what is roller derby? And who is Charlie? Someone otherwise called Charlotte? He couldn’t mean Charlie Denton, could he? What on earth would Lynley be doing out and about with Charlie Denton?
She said, “Sir, sir…,” but it was hopeless.
Another roar from the crowd and he said to someone, “Is that a point?” and then to her, “Barbara, may I ring you back? I can’t hear a thing.”
She said, “Yes,” and she thought about texting him instead. But there he was in a moment of happiness and pleasure and how on earth could she tear him from it when the truth of the matter— as she bloody well knew despite her words to Azhar— was that there was nothing he could do? There was nothing anyone could do officially. Whatever happened next was going to have to happen in an extremely unofficial manner.
She ended the call. She stared at the phone. She thought of Hadiyyah. It had been only two years since Barbara had met her, but it did seem as if she’d known her the length of her very short life: a little dancing girl with flying plaits. It came to Barbara that Hadiyyah’s hair had been different the last few times she’d seen her and she wondered how much different it was going to become in the ensuing days.
How will she make you look? Barbara wondered. What will she tell you about your disguise? More, what will she tell you about where you’re going once it becomes clear there are no half siblings for you to meet at the end of your journey? And where will that journey take you? Into whose arms is your mother fleeing?
For this was the truth of the matter, and what could be done to stop it when Angelina Upman was only a mother who’d come to claim her child, a mother who’d returned from “Canada” or wherever she’d been with whomever she’d been with, who was, of course, the very same person to whom she was running, some bloke who’d been seduced by her, just like Azhar, just like all of them, seduced into waiting instead of believing… What had Angelina done and where had she gone?
She had to get back to Azhar, but Barbara began to pace. Every black cab in London, she thought. Every mini cab, and there were thousands. Every bus and after that the CCTV films from the Chalk Farm tube station. Then the railway stations. The Eurostar. After that the airports. Luton, Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow. Every hotel. Every B & B. Every flat and every hidey hole there was from the centre of London working out to the edges and then beyond. The Channel Islands. The Isle of Man. The inner and outer Hebrides. Europe itself. France, Spain, Italy, Portugal …
How long would it take to find a beautiful light-haired woman and her dark-haired little girl, a little girl who was going to want her father soon, who was going to manage— God in heaven, she would manage, wouldn’t she?— to get to a phone and to ring her father so that she could say, “Daddy, Daddy, Mummy doesn’t know I’m ringing and I want to come home…”