man in plainclothes who introduces himself as a detective sergeant. He shows me his ID and a warrant to take Pete’s laptop and phone.
I don’t even have Pete’s phone—he has it with him. I watch as they unplug his MacBook and place it in an evidence bag. “Do you want the power supply?” I hear myself saying.
The detective shakes his head. “We’ve got plenty of those.” They’re almost the only words we exchange. Five minutes after entering the house, they’re gone.
Taking Pete’s laptop doesn’t fit with Mark Cooper’s prediction that the police will only go through the motions, I think. Or is that the point? That now they’ll be able to say they looked for evidence and found none?
The more I think about it, the more ridiculous this whole thing is. Even in some mad parallel universe where the allegations were true and Pete did steal Theo, it isn’t as if he’d have googled “how to steal a baby” beforehand. And anyone who knows him would realize just how crazy the notion of Pete as a heartless, calculating monster is.
But Pete as a would-be hero? an inner voice whispers disloyally. That’s more feasible. I remember the way he was so good in the NICU, even syringing my breast milk into Theo’s nasogastric tube so that the nurses didn’t have to do it. When Theo thrived, Pete, by extension, shared the credit. And yes, he’d undeniably basked in it, just a little. Saint Peter. The best, most caring dad in the NICU…
Stop. I dubbed him Saint Peter because he is a saint—almost irritatingly so, sometimes, but a saint nonetheless. No one knows better than me that his caring nature isn’t an act.
But he might have done it for you, the inner voice says.
And I stop dead, because I know that, at least, could be…not true, obviously, but not impossible. Pete kept the stark reality about hypoxia from me that day because he wanted to protect me. He would never have stolen a healthy baby for his own sake—but might he, could he, have stolen a healthy baby because he thought I couldn’t cope with the alternative?
Was it his very sainthood that prompted him to commit the most terrible of acts—not out of heartlessness, but the very opposite, love?
* * *
—
WE RARELY TALK THESE days about the period that brought us together. It was a wild time in my life—I’d moved to Sydney, gotten a job in television production, started working hard and partying even harder. I certainly wasn’t looking to fall in love, so when I fell for an older, married TV presenter it came as a shock. For three whirlwind months I convinced myself he was telling the truth when he said he was going to leave his wife and family for me. He didn’t, of course. I became depressed; there was a messy cry for help—an overdose I ended up not being able to keep down—followed by a long period of numb recuperation. And a good-looking, well-mannered English boy who didn’t seem in the least put off by the fact I was an emotional wreck, or by my frequent reminders that we’d never be anything more than friends. And slowly, friendship became something else—or rather, I suppose, I came to realize that friendship is actually a more important ingredient of a relationship than I’d given it credit for. When I did eventually sleep with him, it was more out of a sense of gratitude than anything else. There, that’s done now. But somehow, it didn’t stay as a one-off. On some level, I liked the comfort that sex with Pete gave me. And once you were sleeping with your best friend, you were effectively in a relationship. He was my rock, the one who cared for me at a time when to be cared for was what I needed more than anything else.
But would he really commit a crime for me? Surely not—the guilty conscience would plague him; his very sense of who he is would be shaken to the core. Yet here we are, with him effectively accused, and me doubting his innocence…
This is what happens, I realize. This is how couples get torn apart by circumstances like these. Doubt and mistrust, combined with financial stress and the agony of not knowing whether a judge is going to order our child taken from us, would eat away at the strongest relationship. I mustn’t let it happen to me and Pete.