Critical Incidents. Lucie Whitehouse

       Chapter Three

      In the raw, disorientated, underground early months of Lennie’s life, Robin had used to wait for Corinna’s key in the door as if they were married. She’d start watching the clock at six, when the shop closed, and she’d imagine where she was now and now and now, picturing her tracking back towards them – the walk up to Notting Hill Gate, the number 94 bus – and then, at last, the rattle of the key, the thud as the carrier bag hit the hall floor. ‘Hello? Lennie? Where’s my favourite girl?’ Normality suddenly, as if it had blown in with Corinna when the door opened. The crushing panic, the waves of What have I done? How the hell am I going to do this? retreated, driven back by a cold bottle of Singha beer from the corner shop and the oven on for jacket potatoes.

      To do that for someone. And then – at that age. Even now, years later, Robin thought about it and was amazed. An hour after she’d jumped off the bus hurtling her and the bean that was the start of Lennie towards the appointment at the Marie Stopes clinic, she’d phoned Corinna in Birmingham and by eight o’clock that evening – the first time Robin had ever ordered herself an orange juice at a pub – Rin had been in London, sitting opposite her at the sticky table, stunned but not shocked, not trying to ‘make her see sense’ as Christine had screamed later but talking about how they – they – could make it work.

      Over the next few months, Corinna had uprooted her life for them. She’d been on the WHSmith management trainee scheme then and she’d arranged a transfer from the New Street branch to the one on High Street Kensington and, two weeks before Robin’s due date, she’d packed her bags and driven her Ford Fiesta down the M40 to London. She’d lived with them until Lennie was eighteen months old and she’d never once made Robin feel as if she were even doing her a favour. ‘Oh, shurrup,’ she’d said in the Yorkshire accent she put on when dodging anything serious. ‘Helping you? What makes you think I’m not using you? I’d never do this without you – I’m probably going to be in Birmingham forever after this, aren’t I, with Josh and the factory? This is my adventure.’

      And sometimes, when she was there and Robin had had a four-hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep, it had felt if not like an adventure, at least not terrifying. Doable. Amid the anxiety – was Lennie getting enough milk? If she rolled in the night, would she suffocate? How was she, Robin, going to afford a child? – there were times when they’d start laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of their being in charge of a baby and not be able to stop. So many things: the way they’d had to take off their jeans to give Lennie a bath because the tub was cracked and leaked onto the floor; Psycho Mike-o from number 14 who’d asked Rin out three times a week; even the snails that came in under the back door overnight and left silvery trails over the grim nylon kitchen carpet. For a year and a half, that flat off Uxbridge Road had been their world, their tatty, semi-subterranean bunker of a world, and now no one else knew about it.

      Except Josh, because he’d been there, too, more weekends than not. Though his dad was training him up to run their family business back in the Midlands, most Friday nights he’d arrived on the doorstep in Shepherd’s Bush with a curry – ‘Not the Balti Triangle but it’ll do’ – and stayed ’til Sunday. He’d watched Euro 2004 on their scratchy green sofa, giving Lennie a bottle, and when they’d all gone out together, he’d taken her in the baby carrier, her cheek pressed sideways against his chest, little feet bumping the tops of his thighs. He’d only been twenty-four but if anyone ever thought Lennie was his, he’d never jumped to deny her like some of her other mates had, the ones who’d treated Robin as if she was suddenly a different, mildly contagious person, The Girl Who Got Knocked Up.

      The slam of a car door. Lifting her head from her hands, she saw a tall black woman in a three-quarter-length coat on the pavement outside. A second later, as the woman checked her phone, a shiny blue-black head emerged from the driver’s door on the far side. Robin froze.

      Riveted, she watched as the man rounded the back of the car. The hair was right, he was Indian or Pakistani, but then he looked up and – oh, thank fuck – she saw that the face underneath it was wrong: too young, too fine-boned, too light. And as he stepped onto the pavement, she saw that he was too short – two or three inches too short, under six feet. She leaned backwards into the cover of the dining-room curtains, heart thudding.

      Energetic footsteps on the path, then the four Big Ben notes of the doorbell. Her mother appeared in the archway, eyelids swollen. ‘They’re here, love. Shall I let them in?’

      ‘I’ll do it.’ The room tilted as she stood, the floor underfoot uncertain. Her body moved as if she were operating it by remote control – left leg, good, now right leg – normal communication between brain and muscles suspended. When Maggie had dropped her back a couple of hours ago, direct from Sparkhill, she’d walked up the front path like the Tin Man, stood with her arms by her sides, thousand-yard staring as Maggie told Christine what had happened.

      Through the pebbled glass panel beside the front door now, the shimmering outlines of the police made them apparitions, visitors from another dimension.

      ‘Robin Lyons?’

       DCI, to you.

      ‘DS Thomas,’ said the woman, showing her ID. ‘We spoke on the phone. This is DC Patel.’ Up close, he looked even younger than he had outside, twenty-five or -six, baby-faced. Thomas wasn’t that much older, early thirties, perhaps her own age, but her vibe was completely different. Meerkat-straight, shoulders back, posture accentuated by the crisp angles of the coat and a pair of black trousers with a sharp centre crease. Her hair was cut short at the sides, the longer top shaped into a wedgy quiff that reminded Robin of Emeli Sandé. Masculine-feminine. Got my shit together,