Page 95 of Days You Were Mine

I catch Michael’s eye and he smiles at me, minimally; he always was the master of understatement. But I can’t help myself. I jump up from the table and start hugging the band, one by one.

‘This is incredible news,’ I say. ‘There is literally nothing I would like more than to get involved with the next record. I’ve got so many ideas.’

Over the next couple of hours, we brainstorm the new album – hands down my favourite part of this job – and I have a suggestion for them. There’s a record player in the meeting room and I tell them I have something to play them. I feel a confusing mix of emotion takingApparitionout of my bag, knowing none of them will ever have heard it before. Proud, yes, but also wretched, sorrowful.

‘This band had short-lived success in the seventies,’ I say, flashing the album at them.

Bex says, ‘Oh my God, I love the cover. Is that an oil painting? Weird. I feel like I’ve seen that guy before; he looks familiar.’

‘Disciples were a rock band, but they sang ballads too, and the songwriting is sublime. There’s a track called “Cassiopeia” and you can hear the influences of the time; it sounds very seventies. But there’s also something about the song that stops you dead. And I’ve been trying to unpick what that is. Have a listen.’

I glance at their faces and I see that they are rapt, entranced, just as I was the first time I heard it. But mostly I’m communingwith my dead father; I’m telling him, Jacob, I think we’ve got this. You and me together. Father and son.

‘Well done,’ Michael says, when we’ve seen the band off the premises a couple of hours later ‘This is totally down to you and your musical integrity. One of the reasons you’re so good at your job is because you understand about songwriting and you can talk to musicians about it. You’d be surprised how few A&R men actually can.’

I am sunning myself in this unfamiliar praise, deeply attuned to each word he speaks, trying to remember it exactly to tell Hannah later, when Janice calls out to me from reception.

‘Hey, Luke, you need to call home right away. Your mum rang a few times and also Hannah. They need to get hold of you.’

And right there my world fragments into a thousand tiny pieces.

I take my phone out of my pocket and see I have eleven missed calls, six from my mother, five from my girlfriend.

Hannah picks up on the first ring, which is in itself enough to terrify. Why isn’t she at work?

‘For God’s sake,’ she says, but she is crying too hard to finish the rest of the sentence.

‘Christ, what’s happened? Is Samuel hurt? Hannah?’

‘He’s … gone.’

The sound that Hannah is making is horrible; not crying, more of a demented wail, the howl of a mother whose child has died.

‘Gone? What does that mean? Who has gone? Samuel?’

My mother comes on the phone, also crying, and this, more than anything else, acts as a trigger warning. My mother is not a woman who cries.

‘Someone has taken Samuel from his cot. It happened when I was in the garden. I didn’t have the walkie-talkie thing, but the back door was open and I always hear him.’

‘Alice.’

‘It must be. She still had keys, didn’t she? No one else could have got in. And also he would have recognised her, so it wouldn’t have been a shock. I’m so sorry. Luke? Are you there?’

Am I? Not really. I am bent double, arms round my ribcage, searching, searching for my breath.

Alice has stolen my baby. And somehow, somewhere down deep inside me, I always knew this was going to happen.

Then

Alice

In September, the tourists leave and we have this sedate seaside town back to ourselves. The weather is beautifully warm and we spend most days at the beach, Rick painting, with his easel set up on the sand, Charlie and I playing with shells and pebbles and dipping our feet into the sea.

He laughs at the cold water, never cries. Not when a seagull flies almost into his face as he dozes on the rug. Not when a fat elderly Labrador comes over to investigate and lands a long rivulet of drool on his face.

He is such a genial baby that we often take him out in the evening, wrapped up in a little woollen coat I knitted for him in rainbow stripes. Sometimes we walk up to the pier, stopping for fish and chips at our favourite stall, then spending the coins we save all week in the slot machines. Charlie’s favourite is the moving shelf of pennies; he watches transfixed, waiting for the coins to clatter onto the shelf below, surprising people with his wild, uproarious giggle when they do.

The nights are beginning to darken, but there’s still enough light for our favourite walk to Walberswick, across the marshes and past the water tower, Southwold’s famous beacon of ugliness. We’ll always stop for a half of cider at the Anchor and share something to eat if we’re feeling rich enough.

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