Give Me the Child: the most gripping psychological thriller of the year. Mel McGrath

shrugged and twisted her body so that she was no longer directly facing me. She’d always been careful with her opinions, eager to please, and worried about offending.

      Tom appeared then and, spotting my glass, just as quickly disappeared into the kitchen to fetch one for himself. When after a while he hadn’t come back I got up and padded after him. The kitchen was empty. I figured he must be hiding in his study. The study door was pulled to but the light was on and I could hear the low repetitive rhythm of Ruby’s voice coming from inside. Through the gap in the door, I saw her perched on Tom’s desk with the phone in one hand. She seemed to be talking into the handset. There was no sign of Tom himself, though. I hadn’t heard him going up the stairs, and was about to slip back into the kitchen on the assumption that he’d gone into the garden when something stopped me and I held my breath for a moment. What I thought I heard was repeated. I stood there listening for a few minutes longer. Ruby was on the phone but she wasn’t talking. She was repeating the word ‘blah’ over and over again. ‘Blah, blah, blah, blah.’ This went on until, pushing the door open, I walked into the room. The instant she saw me she threw down the phone. Her face was flushed.

      ‘Did you get cut off?’

      Ruby bit her lip and slid from the desk. ‘She hung up.’

      ‘You know what? She probably didn’t realise you were still speaking. Why don’t we call her back?’

      ‘No, I’m going to my room.’

      I watched her go up the stairs then returned to the kitchen to find Tom sitting at the table with a wine glass to his lips flipping through the pages of a gaming mag.

      ‘What happened to you?’

      He frowned and said defensively, ‘I was in the garden.’

      I told him about Ruby’s strange behaviour in the study.

      ‘This is all so weird. She won’t speak to her own grandmother and she’s barely mentioned her mother.’

      ‘The poor kid’s in shock.’

      ‘Well, OK, but there’s other weird stuff too. Aren’t you bothered about the boiler man coming a week before the accident? Or the window in the bedroom being shut even though Ruby’s mother almost always kept it open?’ I’d mentioned this to Tom the day Ruby arrived but, just as he did then, he dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

      ‘I’ve talked to the police. They checked the boiler. It was old. The pilot light went out. End of.’ He seemed rattled and angry and I thought I knew why.

      ‘How was the chat with Ruby’s grandmother?’

      ‘Meg. Her name’s Meg,’ he said irritably. I’d touched on a nerve.

      ‘Is there a problem?’ I asked.

      Tom threw down his magazine. His face was a sudden hailstorm, then, just as quickly, it readjusted itself and, in a flat tone, he said, ‘Look, we’re going to need to have a rethink. Meg Winter lives in a tiny one-bed flat on that arse-end of an estate. She has emphysema and she’s basically a bitch. She’s not prepared to take on Ruby.’

      ‘Is this about money? Because if it is…’ I was willing to pay.

      ‘Maybe. Social services think there’s some past history with drugs, so I’m not sure they’d let Meg have Ruby anyway.’

      It took a moment for what he’d said to register. A feeling of panic rose up. ‘Any other relatives?’

      ‘An uncle. He’s in prison. No one else.’

      ‘Jesus, Tom. We can’t do this. We don’t know anything about her.’ I heard myself listing all the reasons why it would be impossible for Ruby Winter to come and live with us. Tom let me finish, but I could see he wasn’t listening.

      When I ran out of steam, he said, ‘Actually, we do know something about Ruby: she’s my daughter. You think I want this any more than you do? But what choice do we have, really? We can’t put her into care. She’s family. We’ll talk about getting some help tomorrow.’

      ‘Help?’

      Tom slid the magazine away. ‘Obviously we’re going to need someone in the house. I can’t look after two kids and work.’

      ‘We can’t afford “help”.’ Tom had borrowed money from his father to put into his business. For the last three or four years I’d been paying all the household expenses. The mortgage was huge and Tom had remained very attached to his expensive wine and skiing holidays. And now, what, another mouth to feed? The services of a childminder?

      ‘Oh, but we could afford to pay a sick old junkie to take the problem away? What we really can’t afford is for me not to be able to work. I’m nearly there, Cat.’ He pinched his fingers. ‘Just a whisker away.’

      The anger on Tom’s face had been replaced by a weary resignation. ‘I know, it’s a fucking nightmare.’

      The door swung open and Freya’s face appeared. She looked anxiously from one of us to the other.

      ‘Will you come up and read me a story?’

      I nodded a yes. ‘You go up, I’ll be there in five minutes.’

      Tom waited until Freya had gone then muttered, ‘You know, this has hit me too. But you might make a better job of trying to like Ruby.’

      Then pushing his wine glass away, he sprang up and walked out of the door. Moments later, I heard the front door slam, then the sound of the car engine.

      I slugged back the last of the wine, put both glasses in the dishwasher then climbed the stairs. Originally, I hadn’t been minded to sympathise with Lilly Winter, but the visit to the Pemberton had changed things, made me regard her with more compassion, as a woman trapped inside a world from which she could not escape, a single mother who had been forced to borrow twenty pounds to pay a cowboy tradesman to fix the boiler that, as it turned out, would kill her. The visit had also made me glad all over again to have escaped. What it didn’t do is make me any happier about living with her daughter.

      From the upstairs landing, I could hear Freya brushing her teeth. Ruby was sitting on the bed in her pyjamas, holding a pen in her fist like a weapon. She looked up as I entered and the patched-on smile appeared on her face but her eyes were big with tears. I went to comfort her. As I approached I saw a series of crude squiggles on her arm. She had picked up a paper clip and, with her right hand, was pressing the cut end of the wire in under the fingernail of her left index finger. Blood had begun to bead out over the top of the nail. I reached towards her and grabbed her right wrist.

      ‘Please, Ruby,’ I said, extracting the paper clip from her hands. She was crying now, but when I cupped a hand around her head in an effort to comfort her, she stiffened. I felt terrible for wishing that she was somewhere, anywhere else but at Dunster Road. But still I did wish it.