is thick with muddled dreams. At first she is back at the hospital, sitting at Lewis’s side, then suddenly she’s running through the park, searching for Mabel. Her heart is beating loudly in her chest and her legs are aching. She tries to shout Mabel’s name, but her throat cracks and only a strangulated squeak comes out. The action cuts to somewhere else, a street she doesn’t recognise – maybe it’s near the hospital, she can’t remember. She’s on her bike, racing down a hill, trying to escape or chasing after something, she doesn’t know, can’t work it out. Now she can hear a baby crying in the distance, a high-pitched whine. Or maybe it’s an ambulance siren, or the machines in the hospital, bleeping to a crescendo.
‘Ruby? Ruby, wake up!’ Amber shakes her. ‘Wake up!’
‘Whaaa?’ She unsticks one eye.
‘Can you hear that noise?’ Amber flings off the duvet. ‘That noise! Coming from downstairs. It sounds like … like …’ She turns to Ruby. ‘Can you hear it? Or am I going mad?’
‘No, I can hear. I thought I was dreaming—’ But Amber is already out of the room.
Ruby gets out of bed, wobbling as she tries to make her legs hurry. The noise – it’s clearly crying – is getting louder. She clambers down the stairs as if they’re a rock face, almost slipping as she rounds the corner and crashes into the nursery. Her heart stops.
Amber is standing by the cot, shaking and weeping. She is holding Mabel in her arms.
Chapter Forty-One
With Mabel
Amber backs away as the SOCO advances towards her and Mabel. ‘I’m sorry, but we need to take her clothes and a few swabs,’ the woman says. ‘We’ll be as quick as we can.’
‘I don’t think I can let her go,’ Amber replies. From the moment she picked Mabel up, they’ve been fused together with maternal superglue.
Downstairs, detectives, uniforms and forensic investigators are swarming all over the flat, buzzing like insects, brushing and dusting and dropping items into plastic bags. Outside, the road has been blocked off again and there is a lot of activity by the front door and garden. The media guys who have harangued and bullied them for the past week are jockeying for position at the police tape like excited children. Onlookers are assembling by the park railings in eager anticipation, as if waiting for a carnival procession to pass by.
‘Just for a few seconds. Come on, it’s important,’ whispers Ruby. ‘They need evidence.’ She gently peels Mabel off her mother and helps lay her down on the plastic sheet.
‘You can undress her, Amber,’ the SOCO says kindly. ‘Just take it very slowly and carefully.’
They’ve been banished to the loft bedroom, where’s there’s less chance of forensic contamination. Amber and Ruby have been put in the same protective clothing that everyone else is wearing – paper suits, masks, gloves and shoe coverings. On no account are they allowed to move until DI Benedict says it’s okay. He is trying to organise the best way for them to leave the building. Although there are no obvious signs of injury and Mabel is smiling from ear to ear, an ambulance is on its way to take her to hospital, where she can be properly checked out.
Amber starts to undo the poppers on the hideous pink sleepsuit. She eases Mabel’s arms and legs free, then removes her vest, gasping with relief as she reveals her daughter’s soft, milky skin. It’s clean and unblemished, not a scratch or bruise in sight. She bends over and, despite being told to keep physical contact to a minimum, lifts her mask and kisses Mabel’s cheek. She’s already done it a hundred times anyway. A faint floral scent fills her nostrils – some kind of synthetic fabric conditioner, she suspects.
The SOCO snatches up the clothes and deposits them in evidence bags, then takes countless photos of Mabel from every angle. That done, she clicks open a case and places various packets of sterile swabs and test tubes on the plastic sheet.
‘Be as quick as you can,’ urges Amber. ‘I don’t want her to get cold.’
They watch the investigator work quickly and efficiently. Amber is reminded of the morning after Mabel was taken, only this time everything is in reverse. What is the opposite of a crime scene? she wonders. First the police wanted to find out who’d taken Mabel; now they want to know who brought her back. At this moment, she doesn’t care who did it or why or