Keep Her Safe Read online

  I know that’s impossible. He’s the size of a passion fruit, and months away from having eyebrows. Or is twelve weeks a small lemon? I can’t remember. Only women who are pregnant for the first time obsess about which fruit most closely resembles their growing child at each gestational stage.

  I hold the photo in both hands for a few seconds, then put it down on the bed.

  My third baby. I am in Arizona, on holiday with my third child. The idea makes me smile.

  That’s enough blue-room thinking for now. I pick up the photo and return to the living room, where I notice straightaway that something is different. There it is: today’s mail, a white square on the floor by the casita’s main door. It definitely wasn’t there before. I feel a spurt of anxiety in case it’s a letter explaining that I can’t stay here—Riyonna wasn’t authorized to be so generous on the resort’s behalf—or, even worse, a note from Hairy Chest Man, who has somehow found out where I ended up.

  Thankfully, it’s neither. It’s a printed note on a square card that has Swallowtail’s embossed logo in the top left corner: “If you would like fresh orange juice delivered to your casita each morning, please press the button by the side of the door so that the light comes on. No need to wake up early! We will leave your juice in a cool-box outside your door. Thank you!”

  What button? I look and see that there are three. One has a picture of a maid holding a vacuum cleaner, and another has the same picture with a big red line through it. The third has a picture of a glass with a straw in it. I press it, and it lights up with an orange glow.

  Wow.

  I put the ultrasound photo back in the safe pocket of my bag, zip it up, check that I’ve zipped it securely, and head out into the hot afternoon.

  Swallowtail’s main restaurant is called Glorita’s and has as many tables outside as in. I’ve picked one on the terrace that has an amazing view of Camelback Mountain. A large white parasol protects me from the glare of the sun. I’m about to start looking through the options when a black-haired young man with flawless olive skin appears by my side. “Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Felipe, and I’m going to be taking care of you today.” He smiles and holds out his hand. I feel like I have no choice but to shake it and tell him my name, though I wish I didn’t have to. Lovely though he seems, I only want him to bring me some food, not become a lifelong friend.

  Ugh, I know what this is. It’s my Englishness. It’s going to embarrass me for as long as I’m in Arizona. At home I’m considered normal—no one in Hertfordshire wants to get pally with the person who delivers their lunch—but the minute I set foot in a friendly country like America, I’m uptight and standoffish.

  To compensate for my cultural deficiency, I smile at Felipe till my jaw aches and tell him I’m nearly thirteen weeks pregnant. It’s his fault for asking if there’s anything I don’t eat. “Oh, how adorable,” he says. He waves at my stomach. “Hello, Cara’s baby! Welcome to Arizona!”

  Tears prick my eyes. The idea that, after me, the person happiest about my pregnancy is a complete stranger who can’t really care either way—who is nice by default, because it’s his job—makes me so angry, I want to yank the red cloth off my table and send all the cutlery flying.

  Thank goodness for sunglasses. Maybe the guests at all the other tables are also crying behind their dark lenses.

  Felipe has views about what I ought to eat and drink, and he sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about. On his advice, I order Swallowtail’s signature blueberry and oat smoothie and a casserole of butternut squash, chorizo and sweet creamed “grits,” whatever they might be.

  While I wait for both to arrive, I look at what I brought with me from the folder in my casita. The two sheets of paper I picked out at random turn out to be a map of the resort and a list of activities available. There’s enough here to keep anyone busy for three months at least: guided hikes, canyon jeep tours, an “Art for Beginners” intensive two-week course, tennis lessons, guided meditation, stargazing, Vinyasa yoga, Native American flute workshops, a “Vortexes and the Sacred” seminar, an Ayurvedic medicine course . . .

  The list goes on, in tiny print, filling up both sides of the page. There’s a new-age theme to a lot of the options. I’m pretty sure, now I think of it, that I read something on the website about Arizona, and Swallowtail in particular, being some kind of spiritual . . . hub. Or something that meant hub—that’s not the word they used. Normally any whiff of that sort of thing would have put me off. Instead, I found myself thinking that maybe this was somewhere that could lift the spirits—even of those of us who wince at the word “sacred” and want nothing to do with vortexes.

  At a table on the other side of the terrace, a blond middle-aged woman wearing a white lacy caftan, black shorts and high-heeled black sandals says to her companion, a teenage girl, “The best choice—absolutely the best, always—is a gay man.” The girl hisses, “Ssssh! Can you not shut up? What is wrong with you?”

  Must be a mother and daughter. American. I smile as the mother shakes out her long, loose, platinum blond hair and says in an even louder voice, “I could shut up if I wanted to. I don’t want to.”

  Hah. Take that, teenage tyrant.

  I wonder why the girl isn’t at school. Maybe she’s eighteen or older, and just young-looking for her age.

  Or the opposite. Maybe she’s an ancient-looking two-year-old, and cries when she spills fizzy drinks on her cuddly toys . . .

  Were they father and daughter, the man and girl in the hotel room? I assumed so, but I didn’t hear her call him Dad.

  Felipe’s food and drink recommendations are not entirely successful. The smoothie is the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, but I don’t much like the sweet creamed grits. Luckily, I’m hungry enough not to care.

  Felipe looks crushed when I reject his next piece of advice, which is to order the Signature Chocolate Trio. It’s apparently a life-changing dessert, and Felipe tries to suggest that my baby might benefit from having it even if I wouldn’t, but I stand firm, promising to have it after dinner one night instead. Eventually he concedes defeat and brings me the bill to sign.

  I’m desperate to see the swimming pool, but as soon as I see it, I’ll want to leap in, and I should probably digest my lunch first. While I do, I can tackle the least fun item on today’s agenda: sending a message home.

  The idea makes me swallow hard. A message means a reply.

  Coward.

  What if I’ve done something irreversible and lost my family forever? I thought this as I booked my plane tickets and made my reservation at Swallowtail, and the voice in my head insisted, You have no choice. You have to get away from them.

  Having done what I’ve done, I have no right to miss Patrick, Jess and Olly, and no right to feel guilty—that’s just a way of kidding myself that I’m a better person than I am. And I have a duty to make contact now, whether I want to or not.

  I leave Glorita’s and follow a sign to reception. Nothing looks familiar. I pass a fenced-off yard that’s clearly the resort’s club car depot. Peering through the slats of a white-painted fence that’s meant to block the area from guests’ view, I see a group of men and hear them talking and laughing: the drivers, waiting to be summoned to transport those who would rather not walk.

  Am I lost? Should I ask one of them to drive me? The resort map in my bag proves useless—or rather, I’m useless at interpreting it—but I want to walk even if I end up taking a longer route, so I pick a random direction and keep going.

  Reception ought to be over here somewhere . . .

  I cheer quietly to myself when my navigational instincts are proved right. There it is: the main hotel building’s semicircular façade. Riyonna waves frantically as I walk into the red marble lobby, apparently made ecstatic by my arrival. Her fingernails have changed color overnight: from eau-de-Nil green to pale lilac. I hope she’s not about to leap out from behind the desk and hug me. Thankfully, she’s dealing with another guest, so I have some degree of pr
otection. An elderly woman is busy giving her a hard time.

  No free upgrade to a casita for you, angry old lady.

  “Are you listening to me, Riyonna? Well, then, don’t look over there! I’m right in front of you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. McNair. I was—”

  “I was right. And now I’ve been proved right, I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it.”

  The woman must be in her eighties. She’s wearing a blue shirt, maroon corduroy trousers, brown sandals over tights the color of burned toffee, and a hat that’s nothing more than a white visor attached to a strap that goes around her head, with a buckle fastening at the back. She’s white, at least in theory, with hair dyed the exact color of an aubergine and a tan the same shade and texture as my brown Laura Ashley sofa at home.

  I must buy some sunscreen: SPF 50. There’s no way they won’t sell it here. Opposite the reception desk is a shop. Through its open door I can see woven rugs, turquoise and reddish-brown earthenware pots, silver jewelry featuring bright gemstones, wooden painted flutes, inflatable floating things for children to use in the pool. Sun protection cream must be in there somewhere.

  The strident old woman’s neck and arms are lean and sinewy. They look as if more than the usual number of muscles have been stuffed into them. As she berates Riyonna, gesturing wildly, the muscles twist and ripple beneath the chapped, creased surface of her skin. She needs at least a bottle of moisturizer rubbed into her. Maybe that’s why she’s come to Swallowtail. There might be a signature massage at the spa that offers deleatherization.

  “Mrs. McNair—” Riyonna tries again.

  “No one believed me!” The old woman throws up her arms. “Least of all you! I said it was definitely her. Definitely Melody! Did anyone listen? No. No one ever does. You all think I’m loony tunes.”

  “I absolutely do not think that, ma’am.”

  “Yeah, you do. I don’t care. I know what I see, and I know what’s true. And last night I saw her running. Melody, running. Long dark hair flying out behind her. How come she can run all of a sudden? Can my cousin Isaac run? Let me tell ya, he can’t even walk!”

  “Your . . . your cousin Isaac?”

  The confusion on Riyonna’s face suggests that Mrs. McNair has introduced a new character. Melody is the subject of the conversation, whoever she is; what does Cousin Isaac have to do with it?

  “So, now that we know for sure, are you gonna call the police?” Mrs. McNair demands. “Tell ’em I saw Melody running away in the middle of the night? Tell ’em she had that creature with her? She was with her boyfriend! You don’t think he’s her boyfriend? How do you know? He could be anyone! Are you going to call the police? I’ve been right every time. Every. Single. Time.”

  “Every time? Do you mean like last year? Is that what you mean?” Riyonna speaks to her gently. I sense that she’s choosing each word with great care.

  “Ye-es.” Mrs. McNair sounds unsure now. Then she makes up her mind. “Yes! Last year, and the year before, and the other years. All the times I’ve seen her.”

  “But Mrs. McNair, you see a different child every time,” says Riyonna patiently. “They can’t all be Melody, can they?”

  “They are!”

  “Do you remember the year you said a boy was Melody?”

  I quite like the name. Melody Burrows. For a girl, obviously. Mrs. McNair might believe in calling boys Melody, but I don’t. That kind of thing may work in spiritual Arizona, but it wouldn’t go down well in Hertfordshire.

  “I don’t care!” Mrs. McNair snaps at Riyonna. “People can alter their appearances. There’s no doubt in my mind. I saw her with that creature—which means I have proof now! So! I’m going to do something about it.”

  It sounds as if there might be a tragic story of some sort associated with the old lady’s delusion. If I wait to speak to Riyonna, I’m bound to end up hearing all about it, and I don’t want to. I can’t listen to any stories about bad things happening to children.

  I sigh and look around for someone else to ask about the business center.

  The shop. Whoever’s in charge there will know, and I can buy some sun cream. As I walk away from reception, I hear Mrs. McNair say, “So are you gonna call the police? Tell me if you’re not and I’ll call ’em myself. I’ll tell ’em I saw Melody last night, no doubt about it.”

  The woman behind the counter in the shop, instead of directing me to the business center, rushes off into a back room with a promise to find somebody called Mason. The way she says his name gives the impression that if she were only able to produce him, he would solve all my problems and possibly those of the world at large if he had any time left over.

  I wait to be disappointed and am pleasantly surprised when she returns with a tall, fair, bespectacled young man who hands me an iPad Mini in a red leather case, its front embossed with Swallowtail’s logo, and tells me I can keep it for the duration of my stay. “You’re all hooked up already—full and fast internet access whenever you want it. No need to put in any codes, last name, room number.”

  Like the girl on the terrace at lunch, Mason looks as if he could be anything from sixteen to twenty-five. “Also?” he says. “It’ll give you directions for getting around the resort. If you . . .” He holds out his hand, and I pass the iPad back to him. “If you go here, see, you can put in an address anywhere at Swallowtail, and it’ll tell you which way to walk. If you want to switch off spoken directions, you press here—then you’ll just get the on-screen directions. There’s no need to walk—you can always send for a club car, wherever you are, and all in-resort transportation is entirely free of charge—but some of our guests do like to walk, for the exercise or to see the beautiful scenery.”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” I tell him. “So if I type in ‘Pool,’ it’ll take me to the pool? That’s where I want to go next.”

  “Oh! No need to type in anything at all.” Mason sounds shocked, as if I’ve suggested I might try to climb to the top of Camelback Mountain in my flip-flops. “Wherever you want to go in the resort, click here and you’ll get the drop-down menu. See? All the swimming pools are listed.”

  “Ah, right. Yes.”

  “Let me do it for you this first time. Which pool is it you want? The spa pool is adults only, which means no under-sixteens. Or you could go to the lap pool, or The Pond—that’s our eco-pool with a completely natural cleaning system, no chemicals added. Or the family pool?”

  “Oh. Um . . .”

  “Have you tried out any of our pools so far?” Mason asks, inspecting me closely.

  “No, not yet. I arrived late last night and I’ve mostly been asleep since then.”

  “Good to know,” he says. I scour his face for an indication that he’s being sarcastic, but he seems sincere. “In that case, I’m going to recommend you start at the family pool. It’s the biggest one, with the best views, and there’s a fantastic poolside bar and restaurant if you find yourself in need of refreshments. If I say so myself, there are no better cocktails to be had in all of America.”

  He has to be joking. Weirdly, he doesn’t seem to be.

  “There’s an at-seat service, so no need to get up if you’re relaxing. Just press the button on the side of your lounge chair and a waiter’ll come take your order. The pool is L-shaped, and both bars of the L are eighty feet long.”

  I nod. I’ve seen the photo on the website. I’m keen to see the real thing, if only Mason would stop describing it to me.

  “There’s also a hot tub with a cold plunge pool next to it. Drinks can be served to the hot tub—again, you just press a button. Towels are provided free of charge. Does all of that sound good?”

  I’m tempted to roll my eyes and say tersely, “It’ll do, I suppose.”

  “Wonderful. Great,” I say instead. “The family pool it is.”

  “And you want to walk there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want the voice on or off?”

  “Voice?”

 
; “For your directions,” Mason clarifies.

  “Oh, right. Off, please.”

  “Okay. Here you go.” He hands me the iPad Mini with a smile and says, “You have yourself a wonderful day, ma’am.”

  The iPad tells me to walk back through the lobby on my way out of the main building. It doesn’t trust me to work out even that obvious first stage for myself. There’s no sign of Riyonna or Mrs. McNair at reception. I can imagine how glad at least one of them was when that conversation finally ended—unless they moved it elsewhere, out of the way of impressionable guests.

  I walk for about ten minutes, turning whenever I’m told to turn, and finally arrive at the shimmering turquoise pool that’s so much more stunning in reality than it looked in the pictures. There are a few people in the water and many more sitting on lounge chairs around it, most of them under white parasols, with blue, green or pink drinks beside them on wooden tables. Every glass I can see is a different shape.

  There are at least fifty free lounge chairs for me to choose from. Near the bar seems a good idea. I can’t drink alcohol, but a place like this must have a mocktail menu, which is a tempting enough prospect. I can live without booze for Child Number 3’s sake, but no doctor has ever said pregnant women must also be deprived of glacé cherries and colorful paper umbrellas—my second and third favorite cocktail ingredients.

  The mother and daughter from the terrace at Glorita’s are sitting as close to the bar as it’s possible to sit, which means I’m going to have to sit a bit farther away. With all the lounge chairs that are available, I need to leave a minimum of four empty ones between us if I don’t want to risk encroaching on their space. To be on the safe side, I leave five and move toward the sixth. From the corner of my eye, I see something coming toward me. It looks like a pile of white toweling with legs. The legs are wearing white shorts, and there are white tennis shoes on the feet.