Little Face Read online

  His big grey eyes are still locked on me. He is well-built, broad-shouldered, heavy without being fat. Burly is the word that springs to mind. The bridge of his nose is slightly misshapen, as if it has been broken. Beside him, David looks slight. Also vain, with his expensive, Italian salon haircut. Detective Constable Waterhouse has short bristly brown hair that looks as if it has been cut by a barber for a few pounds.

  He has a square, slightly rugged face. It’s the sort of face you could imagine being carved into a rock. I have no difficulty believing that he is a man who protects and rescues people, delivers justice. I hope he will deliver some to me. I guess that he is about my age, maybe slightly older, and wonder what his first name is.

  ‘I’m Alice Fancourt,’ I tell him. On legs that feel as feeble and inadequate as pipe-cleaners, I make my way towards him. When I am near enough, I shake his hand. David is furious that I am not proving him right by gibbering neurotically.

  ‘She’s drunk,’ he says. ‘She came back stinking of booze. She shouldn’t even have been out driving! It’s only two weeks since she had major abdominal surgery. She threatened to stab me.’

  I feel my throat constrict with shock and hurt. I know he’s upset, but how can he be so quick to bad-mouth me in front of a stranger? I would find it hard to do the same to him. It isn’t as if love has a switch that you can flick to ‘on’ or ‘off’ at will. Then it occurs to me that perhaps it is the strength of David’s love for me that fuels his rage. I would prefer to think this.

  When he last spoke to Vivienne on the phone, he agreed with her that it was safe for me to drive, despite what the midwife had said. Now, it seems, he has changed his mind. David is not accustomed to disagreeing with his mother. Faced with one of her strong opinions, he is usually quiet and acquiescent. In her absence he spouts her theories about life word for word, as if he is trying on a personality that is too big for him. I sometimes wonder if David really knows himself at all. Or perhaps it is just that I do not know him.

  ‘Please, Mr Fancourt, there’s no need to be unpleasant,’ says Detective Constable Waterhouse. ‘You’ll both get a chance to have your say. Let’s just try to sort out this mess, shall we?’

  ‘It’s more than a mess! Someone’s kidnapped my daughter. You need to get out there and start looking for her.’ The policeman looks uncomfortable when I say this. I suspect that he is embarrassed on my behalf. How can she stand there and say that, he wonders, when there is a clearly visible infant in her husband’s arms? He will be tempted to draw the most obvious conclusion: there is a baby in the house, therefore that baby must be our daughter.

  ‘Florence is right here,’ David snaps.

  ‘I think my husband feels guilty,’ I explain frantically, feeling my composure begin to slip away. I realise what is wrong. There is a sense of urgency missing from the proceedings. Everything is happening too slowly. That means the policeman doesn’t believe me. My words come rushing out in a torrent. ‘His guilt is expressing itself as anger. He fell asleep when he should have been looking after the baby. When I came back, I found the front door open. It’s never open! Someone must have come in and swapped our daughter Florence for . . .’ I point, unable to say any more.

  ‘No, that’s all rubbish, actually, because this is Florence, right here! Notice who’s the one holding her, Inspector, the one looking after her, giving her her milk, comforting her while her mother cracks up.’ David turns to me. ‘Guilt expressing itself as anger – what a load of rubbish. Do you know what she does for a living, Inspector? Go on, tell him.’

  ‘I’m not an inspector, I’m a detective,’ says Waterhouse. ‘Mr Fancourt, you’re not helping by being so aggressive.’ He doesn’t like David, but he believes him.

  ‘He’s being aggressive because he’s frightened,’ I say. I believe this is true. My theory (I have had to resort to developing theories about my husband over the years, since he never confides in me) is that a lot of David’s behaviour is motivated by fear.

  He appears to think my occupation is in itself enough to discredit me. I feel wounded and belittled. I have always craved David’s good opinion. I thought I had it. I have been married to him for two years. Before today, we have never exchanged harsh words, never argued, sulked, rowed. I used to think this was because we were in love, but in retrospect, our politeness seems entirely unnatural. I once asked David which party he voted for. He dodged the question, and I could tell he was shocked I’d asked. I felt awful, like an oaf with no sense of decorum. Vivienne regards it as bad manners to talk about politics, even to one’s own family.

  David is a very handsome man. The mere sight of him used to make me feel as if my stomach was doing somersaults. Now, I can neither imagine nor recreate my former desire for him. It would seem absurd, like lusting after an illustration. I admit to myself for the first time that my husband is a stranger. The closeness I have yearned for since I met him has eluded me, eluded us.

  David works for a company that makes computer games. He and his friend Russell set up the business together. Russell was an acquaintance of mine at university, and it was at his wedding that I met David for the first time. I had finally surfaced from my depression, but the aching loneliness was still there. I could just about dodge it during the day if I kept myself busy, but it always caught up with me in the evening, when I would cry for at least an hour, usually more.

  I am ashamed to admit it, but I even invented an imaginary friend for myself. I gave him a name: Stephen Taylor. I chose a common, everyday name to make him seem more real, I think. I could only get to sleep at night if I pretended he was holding me in his arms and whispering that he would always be there for me.

  Stephen disappeared on the day of Russell’s wedding. Somebody wrote my name next to David’s on the seating plan and saved my life, or at least that was how it felt.

  Almost the first thing David told me was that his wife had left him before their son was born, that he only saw Felix occasionally, for a couple of hours at a time. Ironically, I remember admiring his openness. I didn’t know then that he would never again confide in me in the way that he did on that day. Perhaps there was an element of calculation involved and the Felix story was David’s equivalent of a chat-up line.

  It worked. I told him about my parents, of course. Talking to David made me realise that death is only one way in which we can lose those we love. I wanted to console him in his misery, and for him to console me in mine. I felt as if I’d met him for a reason and was totally determined that we would rescue one another, that I would end up as his wife. I was desperate to be Mrs Fancourt, to belong to a family again and have children of my own. Fear of being alone, of remaining alone throughout my life, was an all-consuming obsession.

  Despite his obvious sadness about Felix, David kept saying that he didn’t want to ruin my day by being miserable, and spent the afternoon entertaining and flattering me. He told me his Welsh joke, having first asked, ‘You aren’t, by any chance, at all Welsh, are you?’ The joke was about a man who went to the police station to report that his bicycle had been stolen. ‘I came out of chapel, and there it was – gone!’ David delivered the punchline in an appalling accent that made me giggle for days afterwards every time I thought about it. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. He had the warmest smile and twinkliest eyes of everyone at the wedding, and looked as much like a caricature of a wonderful, dream-come-true, romantic hero as the baddies in the games he and Russell design look like caricatures of pure evil, with their red and black capes, their mouths full of fangs and fire.

  David and Russell never seem to run out of ideas for how baddies might be killed. Thanks to my husband, young children all over the country are able to simulate murder, some of it semi-pornographic, in the safety and comfort of their own homes. And yet I have always been supportive of David’s work, approving of something I might normally have had qualms about in order to be loyal to him. If David does it, it must be okay – that was my life’s motto. I thought he felt the sa
me about me.

  ‘Is there a quiet room somewhere where I can take your statement?’ Detective Constable Waterhouse asks.

  ‘There isn’t time!’ I protest. ‘What about Florence? We need to start searching for her.’

  ‘Nothing can happen until I’ve got your statement,’ he insists.

  David points to the kitchen. ‘Take her in there,’ he tells Waterhouse, as if I am an unruly dog. ‘I’ll take Florence upstairs to the nursery.’

  I begin to cry. ‘That isn’t Florence. Please, you’ve got to believe me.’

  ‘This way, Mrs Fancourt.’ Waterhouse steers me into the kitchen, his big, bear-like hand wrapped around my arm just above the elbow. ‘Why don’t you make us some tea while I ask you a few questions?’

  ‘I can’t – I’m in too much of a state,’ I say honestly. ‘Get your own tea if you want some. You don’t believe me, do you? I can tell you don’t. And now I’m crying and you’ll think I’m just a hysterical . . .’

  ‘Mrs Fancourt, the sooner we get this statement done, the sooner . . .’

  ‘I’m not stupid! You’re not out there looking for Florence because you think that baby David’s holding is her, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m making no assumptions.’

  ‘No, but if there was no baby in the house, if David and I were both saying our daughter was missing, it’d be a different story, wouldn’t it? The search for Florence would already be under way.’

  Waterhouse blushes. He doesn’t deny it.

  ‘Why would I lie? What could I possibly have to gain by making this up?’ I try very hard to keep my voice level.

  ‘Why would your husband? Or are you suggesting he genuinely believes it’s his daughter when it isn’t?’

  ‘No.’ I consider carefully what I will say next. It goes against years of love and habit to malign David, but I can’t hold back anything that might help to influence the policeman. ‘He fell asleep when he was in charge of Florence. The front door was open. If he admits that baby’s not Florence, that means admitting he allowed her to be taken. Not that I would ever blame him for what’s happened,’ I add quickly. ‘I mean, who could predict something like this? But I think that’s it, I think David isn’t allowing himself to see the truth, because he’s scared of the guilt he’d feel. But eventually he’ll have to admit it, when he realises that his pretence is getting in the way of you looking for Florence!’ I feel as desperate as I sound. I must speak more slowly.

  Detective Constable Waterhouse is starting to look jittery, flustered, as if all this might be too much for him. ‘Why would anyone swap one baby for another?’ he asks me.

  It strikes me as a slightly cruel question, though I know he doesn’t mean it to be. Cruel is a bit strong, perhaps. Insensitive. ‘You can’t ask a mother to try to get inside the mind of the person who’s stolen her child,’ I say sharply. ‘I honestly can’t think of a single reason why anyone would do it. But so what? Where does that get us?’

  ‘What is the difference between the baby I’ve just seen and your daughter? Anything you can tell me about any difference of appearance will help.’

  I groan, frustrated. David asked me the same thing. It is a male thing, this desire to tick off items on a list. ‘There is no significant difference that I can point to, apart from the absolutely crucial one that they’re different people! Different babies. My daughter has a different face, a different cry. How the hell am I supposed to describe the difference between two babies’ cries?’

  ‘All right, Mrs Fancourt, calm down. Don’t get upset.’ Detective Constable Waterhouse looks as if he is slightly afraid of me.

  I adopt a more soothing tone. ‘Look, I know you come into contact with a lot of unreliable people. My job’s the same. I’m a homeopath. Do you know what that means?’ I prepare to launch into my usual introductory speech about conventional medicine being allopathic whereas homeopathy is based on the idea of curing like with like. His eyes widen briefly. Then he nods and blushes again.

  I once had a patient who was a policeman. He was younger than me but already married with three children and suffering from severe depression because he hated his job. He wanted to be a landscape gardener. I told him he ought to follow his heart. That was how I felt at the time, having recently left a tedious administrative job at the Inland Revenue to become a homeopath. When I met David, when he and Vivienne rescued me from my miserable isolation, I was so grateful that all I wanted to do was help people. Now I wonder if I helped or hindered that poor man with my idealistic, impulsive advice. What if he resigned from the police force and was plunged into poverty as a result? What if his wife left him?

  ‘A lot of my patients have their own unique perception of reality,’ I say. ‘In layman’s terms, a lot of them are nutters. But I’m not, okay? I am a sane, intelligent woman, and I’m telling you, that baby upstairs is not my daughter Florence!’ I open my shirt pocket, pull out the camera film and put it down on the table in front of him. ‘Here. Hard evidence. Get this developed and you’ll see lots of photos of the real Florence. With me and David, at the hospital and at home.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He picks up the film, puts it in an envelope and writes something on it that I can’t see. Slow, steady, methodical. ‘Now, if I could take some details.’ He produces a notebook and pen.

  His lack of urgency infuriates me. ‘You still don’t believe me!’ I snap. ‘Fine, don’t believe me, I don’t care if you believe me or not, but, please, get a team of detectives out there looking for her. What if you’re wrong? What if I’m telling the truth, and Florence is really missing? Every second we waste could be a second closer to disaster.’ My voice shakes. ‘Can you really afford to take that risk?’

  ‘Do you have any other photos of your daughter, Mrs Fancourt? Ones that are already developed?’

  ‘No. Call me Alice. What’s your name? Your first name, I mean.’

  He looks doubtful. ‘Simon,’ he says eventually, cornered. Simon. It was on David’s and my shortlist for Florence, if she’d been a boy. I wince. For some reason the memory of the list is particularly painful. Oscar, Simon, Henry. Leonie, Florence, Francesca. (‘Fanny Fancourt! Over my dead body,’ said Vivienne.) Florence. Mrs Tiggywinkle. Little Face.

  ‘The hospital photographer was supposed to come and take her picture while we were on the ward, but she didn’t come. Her car broke down.’ I begin to sob. My body convulses, as if an electrical charge is running through it. ‘We never got a “Baby’s First Photo”. Oh, God. Where is she?’

  ‘Alice, it’s okay. Try to calm down. We’ll find her, if . . . we’ll do the best we can.’

  ‘There are other photos, apart from mine. Vivienne took some when she came to see us in hospital. She’ll be back soon, she’ll tell you I’m not mad.’

  ‘Vivienne?’

  ‘David’s mother. This is her house.’

  ‘Who else lives here?’

  ‘Me, David, Florence, and Felix. He’s David’s son from his first marriage. He’s six. Vivienne and Felix are in Florida at the moment, but they’re coming back as soon as Vivienne can get them on a flight. She’ll back me up. She’ll tell you that baby’s not Florence.’

  ‘Your mother-in-law’s seen Florence, then?’

  ‘Yes, she came to the hospital the day she was born.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘The twelfth of September.’

  ‘Has Felix seen Florence?’

  I flinch. It’s a sore point. I wanted Felix to meet Florence before he went to Florida. He could have come to the hospital after school, before going to the airport, but he had a snorkelling lesson at Waterfront that Vivienne insisted he should attend. ‘The last thing you need is for him to associate Florence with missing something he loves,’ she said. ‘There’s no rush for him to meet her, there’ll be plenty of time later.’ David agreed with his mother out of habit, and I didn’t challenge her because I knew she was afraid on Felix’s behalf. You can’t argue with fear.

  She assumes h
e will be as reluctant to share his kingdom as she herself was as a child. I think she’s wrong. Not many children are as territorial as Vivienne was. She even objected to sharing her parents’ attention with the family dog, who had to be given away when she was three. I wanted to ask his name when she told me this story but didn’t dare. Ridiculously, I’d have felt disloyal showing an interest in Vivienne’s rival.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Felix was at school when Vivienne came to the hospital, and then they went away later that same day.’

  ‘He’s been away for a fortnight? Isn’t it term time?’

  ‘Yes.’ At first I don’t see the relevance of the question. ‘Oh, but the school Felix goes to is very accommodating,’ I add when I do. They have little choice. Vivienne is one of their more generous board members. They wouldn’t dare to tell her when she can and can’t take her grandson on holiday. ‘He’s at Stanley Sidgwick.’

  Simon raises his eyebrows a fraction. Everybody has heard of the Stanley Sidgwick Grammar School and Ladies’ College, and most have strong views about them of one sort or another. They are unashamedly élitist, fee-paying, single sex, strong on discipline. Vivienne is a big fan. She sent David to Stanley Sidgwick, and now Felix. Florence’s place at the ladies’ college was reserved as soon as my twenty-week scan revealed I was having a girl; her name went down on the list as ‘Baby Fancourt’. Vivienne paid the three-hundred-pound registration fee herself, and only mentioned it to me and David afterwards. ‘There’s no better school in the area, or, for that matter, in the country, whatever the league tables say,’ she insisted. I probably nodded vaguely and looked bemused. All I wanted was to deliver my unborn child safely into the world. I hadn’t given schools a thought.

  ‘Felix doesn’t live with his mother?’ asks Simon.

  I wasn’t expecting him to ask this. I admire his thorough approach, the way he asks questions around the obvious point of focus. I do the same with my patients. Sometimes, by looking only where you’re directed to look, you miss everything that’s important. ‘Felix’s mother is dead.’ I watch Simon carefully as I say this. He doesn’t know, evidently. It is absurd to assume that every policeman will be familiar with the details of every case. Or maybe he knows, but hasn’t yet made the connection. Laura’s surname wasn’t Fancourt. She didn’t change it when she married David. That was the first thing that annoyed Vivienne about her, the first of many.