Baby Love Read Online Free PDF

the top bars and clubs,
the chicest restaurants and galleries. It was bright lights and big-city buzz. If you were really lucky – and loaded – you lived there. Helen and David Carver had held their apartment-warming three years ago.
    Now framed in their big picture window, Helen gazed down on the activity below. Garishly painted narrow boats bobbed or glided on the surface of the water. A few hardy tourists juggled umbrellas and Nikons, snapping the pub where Bill Clinton had
sipped a pint and inhaled chips. Helen remembered when dumped prams and dead rats were about the only entertainment on offer around the canal, and in it. Brindley Place, like Helen Carver, had come a long way.
    Gently, very gently, she eased the baby into a more comfortable position. The last thing she wanted was Jessica to wake and cry again. But she was like a dead weight, hot and sticky, on Helen’s neck. Holding her breath, she carefully laid the
baby on the settee, watching anxiously as an incipient protest faded and Jessica drifted back to sleep.
    Helen tugged at the long sleeves of her high-neck blouse, trying to relax. She’d seen the story about the missing baby on the TV news. It was shocking, of course, but she’d virtually tuned out when the location was mentioned. The
Wordsworth estate was notorious across the country, let alone the city, for its sky-high crime rate and dysfunctional lowlifes. Helen shuddered; it was no place for a baby.
    She gazed down at her own child. She and David had tried for years to start a family. They had a gorgeous home, exotic holidays, top-of-the-range cars, but it had begun to pall without a baby. And now? Helen dabbed angrily at a drying patch of milky
sick on the shoulder of her blouse. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Jessica; but why hadn’t the books mentioned the mess , and the draining, seemingly endless exhaustion?
    Shaking her head as if to banish the negative thoughts, she stroked Jessica’s cheek. The blemish was barely noticeable, really. Her mouth tightened as the child farted, rigid and red-faced. Another smelly nappy. Wrinkling her nose, Helen drew
back a cuff, checked her Gucci watch. It could wait until her mother-in-law, Veronica, returned with the shopping.
    She picked up a copy of Vogue, leafed desultorily through a few pages. Jessica writhed and grizzled. Helen threw the magazine petulantly across the room and went to lift the child just as a key turned in the door. Thank God. Veronica would deal
with it. Helen could sleep for an hour, maybe two. That was all she needed. She was so tired these days, what with her hormones and everything.
     
6
    “My daughter’s shattered, inspector. I’ll grant you a few minutes. And I’ll sit in. Naturally.”
    Mike Powell, accompanied by DC Carol Mansfield, was paying an unscheduled house call on Martha Kemp. He was spitting spikes but smiled politely and made sure his eyes did as well. Body language was Morriss’s big thing but he reckoned he was more
fluent. Take Kemp’s rigid stance, tight lips. They screamed that she was in the wrong and knew it.
    The radio presenter had insisted her daughter’s questioning take place at home. After clearing it with the police doctor, she’d whisked Laura away. No problem with that. Except she hadn’t bothered to inform anyone at Highgate. For
nearly an hour, Powell had hung round the place waiting to talk to the girl. Now he was being spoken to as if he was some bloody tradesman at the door. The only surprise was she hadn’t ordered them round the back. Mind, it was a classy pad. Moseley
was full of them, more precisely Ludgate Hill was. Kemp’s castle, so to speak, was a double-fronted, three-storeyed Edwardian spread.
    She led the way up a curving carved staircase as Powell checked out marble floors and big mirrors, Regency stripes and old paintings. Carol, who he reckoned was nursing a cold, was bringing up the rear. She shouldn’t have much to do. Sitting-in
job really, like Martha Kemp.