Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

‘They might – h-hurt – you .’

Ruth hugged her close. ‘No. They’re not going to hurt any of us.’

How typical of their sweet, loving girl that her main concern should be for them and not herself. How could that family possibly have produced a child like Beckie? It was as if they had nothing to do with Beckie at all, as if by some accident she’d found herself living amongst them, a changeling in a fairy tale, until Saskia Mair had come along and rescued her.

She made her voice light and bright. ‘Let’s go for a walk, shall we?’

‘Can I take Fat Bear and Hildebrand?’

‘Of course you can.’

‘Can we play Wanderers?’

‘Yes, let’s!’

‘Fiona’s being chased by a Viking.’

As Beckie ran ahead on the path and Ruth juggled Fat Bear, Hildebrand and her phone, she reflected that she should have known Saskia wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. She should have known it would have been Deirdre’s cock-up.

At long last she got through to Alec.

‘Did you get my message?’

‘Um? No. What’s up?’

‘Nothing to panic about, but Deirdre’s cocked up and given the Johnsons our phone numbers and an email address – the Gmail one. So we’re going to have to change them. You haven’t had any dodgy calls or emails, have you, trying to get your name and address out of you?’

Long, terrible silence.

She stopped walking. She dropped the animals. ‘Alec?’

Alec reached for her – then hesitated, his fingertips just touching the denim of her jeans. She smiled at him and took his hand. What was the point in wasting anger and energy on recriminations? The important thing was what happened next.

They were sitting at Saskia Mair’s kitchen table. Beckie was in the sitting room, watching TV with Saskia’s partner and kids, two sweet little boys with big brown eyes. Beckie had shown polite enthusiasm when offered a pot of yoghurt and the opportunity to catch up on the latest doings of Shaun the Sheep, but she hadn’t seemed too sure about Saskia’s partner, a tall, lean Scandinavian type who had obviously been about to head out on a bike ride and was rather sinister in neck-to-knee black Lycra and those weird little cyclist’s shoes.

But he was obviously as lovely as Saskia. When he’d whisked the kids away to the other room, Ruth had protested weakly, ‘Oh, but you’re obviously just heading out…’ and he had assured her, ‘No no, just back actually,’ hustling the two boys away as one of them had started: ‘But Dad, you’re not –’

Thank goodness for people like him and Saskia.

Deirdre had been useless.

Kevin Patterson, the director of the Linkwood Adoption Agency, had been useless.

The police had been useless.

The only person in the world Ruth trusted right now was Saskia Mair.

‘I’m sorry,’ Alec whispered.

She shook her head. ‘It’s okay.’

Although, of course, it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay that he’d blurted out his name and address to Lorraine Johnson when she’d called him pretending to be someone from Argyll and Bute Council chasing unpaid council tax. It wasn’t okay that he’d practically foisted the information on her.

He’d related the conversation to her word for word, as she stood with her eyes open on the picture-perfect view across Loch Lomond, seeing none of it.

It had been a woman’s voice.

‘Mr McAllister? This is Ann Thomson from Argyll and Bute Council. I’m calling about your council tax account. We’ve sent out three reminders, but your account is still in arrears to the sum of –’

‘No no,’ Alec had protested. ‘I’m not McAllister.’

‘This is the mobile number in the database for Mr David McAllister.’

‘My name’s Alec Morrison.’

‘This is the contact number associated with the account. If you’re having difficulty paying, we can arrange for you to pay in –’

‘But it’s not my account! I don’t owe any council tax, we pay by direct debit. My name is Alec Morrison . My address is Backhill Croft, Arden…’

Candy from a baby.

‘Okay,’ said Saskia. ‘I know they’ve given you a load of crap about balancing your need to know with the rights of the biological family. But I’m guessing you’ve Googled them. You’ll have found out a bunch of stuff about Jed and Ryan and Travis?’

Ruth nodded. ‘We Googled Shannon-Rose as soon as Deirdre told us her name, while we were still going through the process of adopting Beckie. And we found out all about the Johnsons and their convictions.’

Saskia made a face. She had a plain face anyway, with rather prominent eyes, and that big nose stud like a huge blackhead. Her hair was streaked with pink. ‘The official stuff, the stuff in the press – that’s not the half of it.’ She took a gulp of hot coffee. ‘I’m sorry. I should have laid it all out for you from the get-go, but to be honest… When I met you, I just wanted so much for you to take Beckie, I knew you’d be perfect for her and – I was worried that if I told you everything I knew about the Johnsons you might back out.’

‘That wouldn’t have happened,’ said Alec.

‘I realise that. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’

Ruth shook her head. ‘None of this is your fault, Saskia. You mustn’t think that. We really appreciate what you’ve done for Beckie. And all the other kids like her. You’re their lifeline – literally – and I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like, what a toll it must take, fighting their corner the way you do, all those poor little…’ She took a long breath. ‘You’re amazing. You’re completely amazing – and we can never thank you enough. But you need to tell us now. You need to tell us all about the Johnsons. We have to know what we’re dealing with.’

‘Thank you for saying that.’ Saskia reached out to touch Ruth’s arm. ‘I’ll help you in any way I can.’

‘I know you will.’

Ruth jumped as the door clicked open behind her. Turning in her chair, she saw one of Saskia’s boys standing holding on to the door handle.

‘Hello, sweetie,’ said Saskia, and the boy came round the table and into her arms. ‘What’s wrong, little one?’

Ruth smiled. This was the older of the two boys. How nice, she thought suddenly, to be called ‘little one’ by your mother when you were the big one to everyone else; the older sibling who was expected to be more stoical, more sensible, more grown up.

‘Nothing,’ he muttered into Saskia’s fluffy mohair jumper. ‘I just wanted to see you.’

Saskia pushed away the blue file that had been sitting on the old pine table next to her coffee cup, as if to put distance between its contents and her own child. As she took him out of the room with her, Ruth reached over and opened the file.

On top was a photograph. A mug shot of an elderly man with protruding ears, a gaunt, grey face, tattoos on his neck, and cold eyes; literally cold, an almost colourless icy blue.

‘That’s Jed Johnson,’ said Saskia from over her shoulder. ‘Fifty-nine but looks at least a decade older. He did sixteen years for murder a while back, a gangland killing, and he’s served shorter sentences for GBH, false imprisonment, armed robbery and drug-related crimes. That’s only what they’ve managed to do him for, of course.’ She came back round the table and sat down, pulling her coffee cup towards her and cradling it. ‘He was charged with a second murder but got off on a technicality after the procurator fiscal missed a statutory deadline. No mystery where Shannon-Rose gets her tendency for violence. This didn’t come out at the Court of Session hearing for the permanence order – I guess they felt there was enough ammunition against the Johnsons without applying for the release of confidential medical records – but in the course of his many incarcerations, Jed was assessed by two different prison service psychiatrists on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. On a scale of zero to forty, one of them scored him as thirty-seven and the other thirty-nine. That means he’s right at the top of the spectrum for psychopathy.’