The Road from Midnight Page 6

  “Jane, there’s a man out here who is demanding to see you,” came Christie’s strained voice through the intercom.

  “Who is he, you know we’re on deadline.”

  “Jim Craig,” she said knowing I would kill her for letting him anywhere near my office. “And I think he might be a little drunk,” she whispered

  Bugger.

  Before he could alert my staff to some good gossip I rushed outside and dragged him down the road to the pub.

  “She’s my baby, Jane, I know it. I can see it in her eyes, they’re my mother’s eyes, you have to let me see her,” he blurted out over his beer.

  “Jim, I’ve already told you a million times I just know she’s not yours.”

  “How can you say that? Both you and that stuck up wanker have brown eyes and brown hair. Well you would if you didn’t dye yours. She has blue eyes and looks nothing like the two of you put together.”

  “Jim, move on for God’s sake. I’m sick of you in my life, when are you ever going to get that message?”

  “I want that test and I want it now. It will take one phone call to the Sundays and you know your life will be over once your husband finds out what really happened.”

  I thought about nothing else for three days and then I calculated that not taking the test was a risk worth taking. Why let him have any more ammunition to threaten me with? As long as he didn’t know for sure no one at the papers would take Jim’s word seriously and risk a defamation case with one of New Zealand’s hottest stars. The worst he could do is ring and harrass me and they have restraining orders for behaviour like that. The alternative, the confirmation that he was her father would mean that he would forever have a right to stay involved in my life and to me that felt like I was being dragged closer and closer to the devil. He kept ringing me for about three months and then strangely, he went quiet. He vanished out of my life and I was cautiously relieved. Occasionally someone would say to me: “What the hell did you do to Jim Craig, he hates your guts,”

  “Really,” I would respond coolly. “Do me a favour and don’t tell me what he said. If it’s anything like the other reports I’ve had then I am mentally ill, a fantasist and not to be trusted.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much it. And he said you’re a fucked writer and your magazine’s an embarrassment to the industry.”

  That hurt, but at least my life was Jim Craig free.

  Meanwhile Lawrence and I got on with our relationship, which had gone down hill since Charlotte’s birth, mainly because she replaced me in his life and I was no longer turned on by the facile person I realised he was. You often hear of a husband feeling left out of the family because the mother is so obsessed with her new baby that she only has time and love for it alone. In my case it was the other way around. I went back to work when she was only four weeks old, mainly because Lawrence always had her out and about with him in her car seat and therefore he was the one who was always changing her nappies and feeding her. I would spend hours alone at home with my only function being to express breast milk for the freezer for Lawrence to grab when he needed it. I saw no reason not to go back to my job as editor, which was something I was good at, because obviously I wasn’t great at being mother.

  From the day I put on my power suit (leaving the top inch undone to accommodate my post-pregnancy belly) my role as Charlotte’s parent, and Lawrence’s wife diminished considerably.

  Apart from my ability to bring in some cash, Lawrence seemed to have no use for me anymore, nor I for him. We continued to sleep in the same bed and have sex occasionally simply because neither of us seemed to have the desire or the inclination to find it elsewhere. And because I refused to be involved in any of Lawrence’s many publicity stunts with Charlotte the general public soon assumed that he was a brave solo dad. When we were out together as a family I would find myself pushed aside as fans eagerly rushed to Lawrence and his little princess while I waited patiently with the pushchair and smiled benevolently. I think most people thought I was the nanny.

  I stayed with him, shamefully, for all the wrong reasons. Because he looked hot on my arm being the younger man, because when I went to work functions people marvelled at what a great catch I had and because, well, I was never going to do much better.

  I was now approaching 30 and while I was bringing in good sales figures for Fabulous Day my ego needed a little more than my boss giving me enthusiastic high-fives at sales conferences. I had started to let myself go. I no longer looked in the mirror, my waist line had expanded alarmingly and the first few grey hairs on my head were beginning to show through. I never went anywhere without a pair of “easy squeezy” slimming pants on, and my clothes became alarmingly boring. In short I hated myself and the way I looked. No wonder I was quite happy to fade into the background around my “made for TV” family.

  I liked to think Lawrence hadn’t really noticed my decline because he never really said anything about it. He seemed quite happy to hang out with Charlotte and I in the weekends, the two of us would go out to dinner occasionally to remind ourselves that we were a married couple and he seemed contented. So when he greeted me after work one day with a bottle of Dom Perignon, and a booking at Fine, the hottest restaurant in town, I immediately became suspicious.

  “Hi gorgeous, have a seat while I pour you a glass of bubbly,” he gurgled enthusiastically.

  “What’s the fuss all about? Oh God I haven’t forgotten our anniversary have I?” I panicked.

  “No, I just thought it was time you and I had a special night out. Things have been so busy lately for both of us and, well, I just don’t feel I’ve spent enough time telling you how much I love you, and our little family. The babysitter’s booked and I’ve made a reservation for eight.”

  “Lawrence, please don’t tell me this is one of your stunts. Please tell me this is a genuine attempt to have some quality time with your wife and I’m not going to end up on television covered in slime,” I said nervously.

  “I love you, Jane, it’s as simple as that.”

  As I dressed for dinner, carefully selecting my matching black lace knickers and bra and dragging out my sexy silk stockings from the back of the drawer I realised that I had put on quite a bit of weight since I last wore the “special night of romance” underwear. Oh well, I would have to squeeze into them and make sure I got undressed in the bathroom before Lawrence saw me. I really wanted this to be as romantic as it seemed it would be but I couldn’t help indulging in what was becoming a frequent paranoia that he had a lover and finally he was going to tell me about her and how he wants to leave me for her and take Charlotte with him.

  “Stop it!” I reprimanded myself. “You’re a paranoid old cow.”

  Later at dinner, as we tucked into salmon for me and steak for him with a bottle of good chardonnay, I almost believed Lawrence. As the alcohol coursed through my system I looked across the table at his caramel eyes, his perfectly styled hair and his youthful enthusiasm and remembered why I fell in love with him in the first place. “Darling, I’ve been thinking for a long time that Charlotte’s old enough now to go for a big trip overseas and we’ve always wanted to see Europe,” he mentioned as he groaned with ecstasy over his chocolate mousse.

  “Mmmm,” I replied, enjoying my perfectly ripe Brie.

  “So I’ve booked us on our holiday of a life time. Two months around Europe over Christmas. My show is off air and you’ve worked so hard for that damn magazine surely you can take some time off for once.”

  “You’ve booked it already? Without even asking me? What if I can’t get the time off work, Lawrence? I just don’t think I can leave the Day for that long.”

  “Darling, I knew if I didn’t book it you wouldn’t come. I know you can make it happen because I talked to Shonagh and she said she’d be delighted to fill in for you.”

  Which was no surprise. My deputy, Shonagh Simmons, was always alarmingly keen for me to push off on a holiday. We’d worked together for years but I knew she wasn’t my
biggest fan. I had heard of her penchant for imitating my mannerisms the minute I left the office in a not very flattering manner, her constant comments about my weight gain and how I’d let myself go, her criticism of the number of times my husband and daughter featured in my magazine – which was actually fair comment. My boss, Tim Holland, had also called me into his office one day to say that he’d had an unsettling conversation with Shonagh in which she appeared to by trying to run me down and persuade him that I was no longer up to the job.

  “Is it true that you are in tears some days at work Jane?” said Tim.

  “No, of course not, Tim. You work closely enough with me to see how I am coping. I can’t think what she’s going on about,” I replied.

  “I can, she wants your job and if she thinks turning my head against you is going to work she’s got another think coming. You are, and have been for the past six years the most successful editor ever in this country and don’t forget it Jane. I’ve got your back.”

  Which only served to make me burst into tears of gratitude.

  When I got back to my office I was tempted to finally haul Shonagh in and read her the riot act. I could get rid of her in a matter of a few months and a series of warnings if I wanted to. And it would be nice to have just one day when her depressingly skinny arse, her expensive designer clothes and immaculately coiffured black hair were not showing me up for the fat, slovenly cow I was. But then I calmed down. She was a great deputy, completely capable and a perfect back up for me. So what if she had these annoying tendencies? I never had to see them and to my face she was the best friend a girl could ever hope for. She ticked all the boxes and so I decided that two could play at her game and we continued on. The magazine never suffered, and neither did I. Not then, anyway.

  Lawrence, Charlotte and I set off for our dream two-month odyssey around Europe. What Lawrence had failed to mention to me was that he would be videoing the entire trip for a documentary he had been asked to do by the network as part of a series he was going to front called Stars on Holiday.

  He waited to tell me this detail until we were safely on the plane, and I was furious with him for tricking me and at myself for not seeing it coming. I wished that just for once we could play out a normal family event behind the cameras. But Lawrence was addicted. His need to be recognised through a lens was something I simply couldn’t fight. And Charlotte, bless her blonde curls had caught the bug. As we flew into Paris you would never have guessed that the five-year-old had just endured 24 hours of flying. As her father switched on the camera she gurgled and bubbled and blurted out every exciting moment of the flight where she had been the centre of attention of not just the cabin staff but the entire bloody plane as well.

  “You have a very special daughter there,” the hostess told me as we disembarked.

  Too special, it would seem.

  9

  I spent this morning thinking about that first visit to Europe with Lawrence and Charlotte. Without it I wouldn’t be living here in Paris half a world away from my country of birth. That trip made me an exile, but as I lit a votive candle for Madonna at St Eustache, I once again told myself that you can’t change the past, and sometimes things happen because they are supposed to. Here’s a clipping I have saved for all these years from the Otago Daily Times. It seems like a good way to describe what happened next.

  TV STAR LOSES DAUGHTER IN EUROPE

  Popular Two Twonight star Lawrence Cunningham and his magazine editor wife Jane Lyndhurst are calling for the return of their five-year-old daughter Charlotte who went missing on Wednesday night on the night train from Paris to Venice.

  The couple woke yesterday morning just outside Milan to find that their daughter who was asleep in their cabin was no longer there. The train was stopped and searched by guards but no trace of her was found. The disappearance is thought to have occurred somewhere between the town of Vallorbe near the border of France and Switzerland and Iselle in Italy where the train stopped in the night.

  Both parents are in Venice where they are working with Italian police to try to track down the child who may have become disoriented and got off the train at one of its two scheduled stops through the night.

  Mr Cunningham in an emotional plea to news media in Venice asked that any information be reported to the Italian police. And he released a video of the child taken just before she went to sleep the night she went missing.

  Italian police say at this stage they are hoping that the child will turn up unharmed and they have men working in all the villages where the train stopped that night.

  My mother had bizarrely cut the story out of the paper for me. I put it down to shock because this was how my parents found out that their only grandchild had gone missing. Dad went to get the Otago Daily Times out of the mailbox and stopped still in his tartan slippers, flannel pyjamas and dressing gown. He stood in the path reading with horror the front page story with a picture of his darling granddaughter staring at him. Mum went out to find him when his cup of tea started going cold and she found him standing still gazing at nothing in particular with the paper discarded on the ground beside him.

  I’ve never forgiven myself for not ringing them straight away. They weren’t the kind of parents I rang all the time, we weren’t close, but I should have stopped for one moment and rung them. Mum says Dad will never be the same, but then neither will any of us.

  The holiday had been going so well. I even started to feel as though Lawrence and I might be falling in love all over again just walking the cobblestone alleyways in Paris hand in hand with Charlotte delightedly bouncing along ahead. We loved the bistros and the food, especially the French onion soup which was Charlotte’s favourite. And we both felt incredibly unsophisticated in our jeans and trainers as we watched the Parisians totter past in high heels and furs. We spent two days looking around the Louvre and were once again astonished at Charlotte’s ability to gaze for ages at a painting and never get bored. We joked that Charlotte was born into the wrong family in the wrong country. Here was a child destined for life in a palace full of the best art works and waited on by the best chefs in the world. By the end of our week in Paris both Lawrence and I wondered if maybe we could live in Paris, when Charlotte was a little older. It was a city which made us feel challenged and grown up.

  We boarded the night train to Venice on Monday night, finding our way to the Gare du Nord. It was cold and dark and I wasn’t feeling too confident about travelling in a train where I had to sleep with other people. But Lawrence thought it was all part of the adventure and, of course, so did Charlotte. When we boarded we found ourselves in a six berth compartment with an Italian mother and her two children, a girl aged five and a boy aged seven. The mother spoke good English and between the six of us we managed to be pleasant with each other and make up the beds for the children. The mother and I were concerned about how the door locked and we spent some time trying to work out how to do this and agreed that we would all keep it locked at all times. I remember this so clearly now because at the time it was like I had a premonition. I felt unusually protective of Charlotte and even considered sleeping in the same bed as her. But Lawrence told me to stop being so stupid. People travel by this train every night, he said, and no one has any problems.

  “It’s just we’re in a foreign country with a different language. What if she went to the toilet in the middle of the night or got lost, I’d never forgive myself,” I said.

  “Jane, you need to relax. No child has ever gone missing off this train. She will be safe, don’t worry I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.”

  I then told Charlotte very clearly that if she needed to get up in the night she must wake me and not to go anywhere in the train without me.

  And so we all settled down for what was a remarkably peaceful night’s sleep as the trained rocked on its tracks. As I tucked myself into the bunk I could hear Lawrence in the bunk above me talking to Charlotte and capturing her words on tape as she talked about her exciting trip on the t
rain. Those precious two minutes of 8mm video would forever become the symbol of my lost child.

  A little girl tucked up in bed with just her little face, blue eyes and blonde curls on the pillow; cuddling her teddy she called Charles.

  “Nigh nigh, Daddy, this train is so cool. I can’t believe I’m going to go to sleep and when we wake up we’ll be in Wenice,” she says.

  “Venice,” Lawrence corrects her.

  “Venice, where the boats are and there’s no roads or cars,” she replies.

  “Night, darling.”

  10

  I woke up before anyone else at 6am. I was bursting to use the loo and glanced at my watch as I slid open the door. It should have been locked but it wasn’t, in fact it was open a few inches. Which is why I turned around and looked into the cabin. Something wasn’t right about that door and before my eyes reached Charlotte’s bunk I knew it was empty. I screamed so loud I’m sure it woke the whole train and started shouting at Lawrence over and over: “She’s gone she’s gone she’s gone!”

  He immediately leapt out of bed and went running to the end of the carriage to the toilets to see if she was there while I asked the Italian mother and her children if they had seen her and looked under the two bottom bunks, knowing that a five year old child couldn’t fit under there.

  When Lawrence came back I pushed the emergency stop button. I didn’t care if she was somewhere on the train, I just needed everything to stop. A grumpy guard came ambling down the corridor and stopped in his tracks as I screamed and shouted about our missing daughter. His English wasn’t very good, and thankfully the Italian mother translated for us. Then it was pandemonium. All the guards converged on our cabin and began systematically searching the train carriage by carriage while I waited, hoping like hell she was just playing with some other children down the end of the train or was stuck in a toilet somewhere.