anywhere. I should get out, make my escape now, but my attention was drawn to the sleeping baby in the back, his breathing gentle and silent. He looked so still and peaceful – how was it that this tiny human being was able to reduce a grown woman to the blubbering, stressed-out mess that Eleanor was becoming?
I reached out a hand to stroke his cheek. It would be so easy to uncouple his straps and lift him from his seat. I could hold him close, snuggle into that warm body. I could show him what a mother should be like; not a resentful, harried shell but someone who would give him everything he needed; someone who would never let a man control her life so completely that she would become useless without him; someone who had no need of another person’s love to make her feel real, rather than a ghost who disappeared when her husband wasn’t looking.
My fingers fumbled with the clasp of the straps, a big red button that was damn near impossible to push in all the way. I knew in that instant that my mind was made up. I was taking him away from all this negativity and betrayal. He wouldn’t grow up a spineless, cheating worm of a man like his father, or married to a needy control freak like his mother. His future would be defined by who he was, not by his fucked-up family.
And that was when he started to stir, his eyes fluttering, his eyeballs rolling back and forth in their sockets, fighting wakefulness. From beneath his dummy came a low moaning noise. I froze. It was like waking up from a dream, one that you desperately wanted to fall back into but you knew the moment was gone. My senses returned. I’d been too long as it was; my luck had been stretched thin, and if I wasn’t careful, it would snap like overloaded elastic.
Without waiting to see if he woke, I shoved open the car door and jumped out, throwing it shut behind me. Clicking the central locking system and cramming the key back into the pocket of my hoody, I jogged back to my tree to wait and watch.
37
Karen
‘How did it go?’
Karen had put her next client on hold to sneak in a phone call to Eleanor between sessions. She’d had her visit from social services that morning, and as far as Karen could tell, she seemed a lot less anxious about it than she had the other day.
‘It was fine.’ Eleanor sounded distracted but calm. ‘I told them the truth: that I’d made a stupid mistake and I’d learned my lesson. There’s no way I’ll let Noah out of my sight again. Adam has offered to cut his hours down for a few weeks and help out a bit more here, let me get a bit of rest. Things will be back to normal in no time.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Of course, why wouldn’t I? It was a stupid thing to do and I won’t let it happen again.’
Karen tried not to sound too judgemental, but she failed to keep the tone from her voice. ‘Because the other day you were convinced that someone had moved your car to try and make you think it had been stolen. Now you’re saying it was all your mistake.’
‘That’s because it was. I didn’t want to admit it the other day, not even to myself, but I made a stupid decision because I was tired. I must have thought I was parking in my usual spot but parked in a different space. When I came out and couldn’t see the car, I panicked, overreacted. It’s not a big deal.’
It had certainly seemed like a big deal on Friday, when she was hyperventilating into a brown paper bag while Karen held Noah and tried to calm her best friend down.
‘Okay, that’s great.’ There was no point in arguing now that Eleanor had made her mind up. If she wanted to believe it was a misunderstanding, that was fine – it made more sense than the wild story she had concocted on Friday about it all being an elaborate scheme by persons unknown to drive her crazy. ‘Let me know if you need anything. I have patients all day today, but if you leave a message with Molly, I can call you again between sessions.’
‘Thanks, and thank you again for the other day. Sorry I was so mental.’ Eleanor tried to keep her