The Mother
‘Maddie,’ Lucas murmured, squeezing her hand.
They were all looking at her. Clearly, someone had asked her a question.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said thickly. ‘Could you say that again?’
‘I know it’s difficult, Mrs Drummond. I’d just like you to walk me through the last time you saw Noah alive.’
Oh, God, Maddie thought, spots dancing in front of her eyes. Oh, God. She was never going to see him open his eyes again. Never see him smile …
‘Maddie,’ the bereavement counsellor interjected suddenly. ‘Would you like to step into the bathroom for a moment to tidy up?’
‘You’re leaking,’ Lucas murmured.
She glanced down. The entire front of her T-shirt and fleece were soaked with breast milk.
The counsellor led her to a small en suite bathroom at the back of the room and shut the door behind them. Maddie stood mutely as the older woman unzipped her fleece and gently pulled her soaked T-shirt over her head as if she were a child. It was like her body was crying, the milk running down her skin in an unstoppable flood of tears.
‘Here, love, use this towel,’ Jessica said, as Maddie unhooked her sodden maternity bra. ‘I’m going to find you a clean T-shirt and bra from our donations box. Would you like me to see if I can find you a breast pump, so you can express a bit, just to tide you over?’
Maddie nodded. When Jessica slipped discreetly out of the room, Maddie sank onto the closed lavatory seat, pressing the towel against her chest. What was she supposed to do with all this milk now? You couldn’t just stop breastfeeding overnight. When Jacob had been nine months old, he suddenly refused to nurse and she’d ended up with mastitis. It’d been agony. Emily had been so much easier. She’d been able to wean her gradually, tapering the number of her feeds over a period of weeks. She’d have to do the same now, she supposed, expressing just enough milk to keep from getting engorged, until her milk flow dried up naturally. She realised with a nauseating sense of horror she’d effectively be weaning a dead baby.
The counsellor returned a few minutes later with the promised clothes and a hand-held plastic breast pump. ‘If you’re wondering what to do with it, there’s a milk bank here at the hospital,’ she said gently, as if she’d read Maddie’s mind. ‘They use it for premature babies in the NICU. You could donate your milk, if you wanted. It wouldn’t be wasted.’
Maddie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The idea of expressing milk for a dead child was more than she could bear.
Jessica left her alone in the bathroom and she pumped off just enough to relieve the fiery heat in her breasts. When she was done, she put on the bra and plain white T-shirt Jessica had found for her and returned to the grief room. Another man had joined the doctor and Lucas while she’d been gone. She knew immediately he was a policeman, despite the raincoat he’d tactfully buttoned up to hide his uniform.
‘PC Tudhope is going to sit in, so we don’t have to go through the same questions again later,’ Lucas said.
‘It’s just a formality,’ the constable added quickly. ‘Please, it’s not my intention to intrude on your grief or suggest any wrongdoing on your part at all.’
‘It’s fine,’ Maddie said dully.
‘Mr Drummond has explained that he was away for work until this morning,’ the doctor said, picking up his file again. ‘So perhaps you could start by saying how Noah seemed to you yesterday?’
‘He seemed fine,’ she said helplessly.
‘Was he eating normally? Did he show any signs of distress at all? Did you notice if he had a temperature?’
‘His temperature was normal. I know, because I checked it twice. Emily and Jacob – our other two children – they both have chickenpox, so I thought he might get sick, but he didn’t have a fever and he took all his normal feeds. He seemed fine,’ she said again.
The doctor looked up from his notes. ‘Your other children have chickenpox?’
‘Emily came down with it a few days ago, and then Jacob the day before yesterday. Why? Is that what—’
‘We can’t rule anything out at this stage,’ the doctor said, gently cutting her off. ‘So, what time did he go down for the night?’
‘His last feed was around ten. He doesn’t usually settle properly after it, because he has colic. I’ll put him down, but he doesn’t really sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. He cries for hours, sometimes. Nothing seems to help.’ She glanced at Lucas as if for confirmation, and he took her hand and squeezed it. ‘We’ve tried everything: colic tablets, gripe water, rubbing his back, a warm hot-water bottle on his tummy, massage, everything. I’ve even tried changing my diet and cutting out dairy and anything spicy, in case it’s something in my milk upsetting him. I asked my doctor if it might be my antidepressants, but he said they wouldn’t affect it. The only thing that seems to help Noah is walking up and down the corridor with him. You can’t even sit down, or he starts crying again.’
It suddenly occurred to her she was still speaking about her son in the present tense. But she didn’t have to worry about Noah crying anymore. Nothing would ever upset him again.
The policeman’s expression sharpened. ‘You’re on antidepressants, Mrs Drummond?’
‘I had postnatal depression after Jacob,’ she said, wondering if he would judge her for it. ‘I’ve been on them ever since.’
‘My wife hasn’t had a depressive episode in nearly two years,’ Lucas interjected quickly.
The doctor made a notation on his pad. ‘Was Noah’s colic worse than usual last night?’ he asked.
‘No!’ Maddie exclaimed. ‘That’s the thing! He didn’t have colic! He didn’t cry at all!’
‘Did you think that odd?’
‘I thought maybe he’d finally outgrown it. Doctors call it hundred-day colic, don’t they?’ she asked desperately. ‘He’s not quite ten weeks old, but I thought maybe he was growing out of it a week or two early, like Jacob did. I didn’t go in to check on him because I didn’t want to wake him. Jacob’s colic was never as bad as Noah’s, but—’
‘You didn’t check on him?’ Lucas interrupted. ‘All night?’
Maddie hesitated. How could she admit she hadn’t checked on their son because she’d been worried sick about why her husband had borrowed some money without telling her? How utterly trivial and unimportant it seemed now. ‘I was just so grateful he’d stopped crying, I didn’t even think why,’ she said wretchedly.
‘In most cases like this, there’s nothing you could have done even if you’d checked him every ten minutes,’ the doctor said gently. ‘I know it’s easy for me to say, but please don’t blame yourself.’
The constable leaned forward. ‘Mrs Drummond, just so I can be absolutely sure of the timeline: you put him to bed around ten last night, and he seemed perfectly fine, everything normal. And then you didn’t look in on him again until this morning, at around seven-thirty, when you found him?’
It didn’t matter how nicely they said it. She hadn’t bothered to see if her baby was all right because she’d been too thankful he wasn’t crying. All that time she’d been praying he wouldn’t wake up, he’d been lying in his cot, cold and dead.
‘I didn’t set my alarm, because Noah usually wakes me long before I need to get up,’ she said, anguished. ‘As soon as I woke up, I went to check on him, but—’
‘No one’s blaming you,’ the doctor said again.
‘You were the one looking after the children yesterday? They weren’t with a childminder or relative?’ the constable asked.
‘No, I stayed home with them because Emily and Jacob were sick.’
The constable glanced briefly at Lucas, his expression considering, and then back at Maddie. ‘No one else was there to help you, Mrs Drummond?’
‘Candace – that’s Lucas’s sister – she stopped by for about half an hour mid-morning. She helped settle Noah down when he woke up, actually, but other than that, it was just me all day.’
‘We’ll need to speak to your sister, sir,’ the constable said.
Lucas nodded. ‘I can give you her number.’
There was a knock at the door. A woman with dark red hair peered in and signalled to the constable, who got up and exchanged a few words with her in the doorway.
‘Can we see Noah now?’ Maddie begged the doctor. ‘Please. I can’t bear to think of him on his own.’
‘He won’t be on his own,’ Jessica reassured her. ‘I’ll take you to him in a few minutes, as soon as we’re done.’
Maddie saw the constable glance over his shoulder at them. He finished his conversation with the red-haired woman and she left. Something in the constable’s demeanour had changed when he took his seat again; a subtle professional shift which reminded Maddie that beneath the tactful raincoat, he still wore a police uniform.
‘It seems a doctor has examined your baby and found considerable bruising to the side of his head,’ he said, his tone carefully neutral. ‘Would you mind explaining that?’
Chapter 11
Saturday 11.00 a.m.
The policeman had addressed both of them, but Maddie felt as if every pair of eyes in the room was directed at her.
‘What bruises?’ she exclaimed, knowing exactly what they meant.
‘On his forehead and left cheek,’ the constable said, indicating their location on his own face. ‘Two long heavy marks running in parallel, quite clearly delineated. They would have been obvious to you, I’m sure.’
Lucas’s expression cleared. ‘Oh, that. He got wedged against the side of the cot a couple of days ago.’ He looked at Maddie. ‘Remember? Those red marks on the side of his face from the bars?’
She felt like she was going to be sick. She’d lied about those marks on the spur of the moment, because she hadn’t wanted Lucas to think she was getting ill again. It’d taken so long for him to trust her properly again. Even after her depression had finally lifted, she’d seen the flicker of doubt in his eyes every time he left her alone with the children. She simply hadn’t been able to face putting it there again.
How could she have known that one stupid, pointless lie might return to haunt her? But if she admitted it now, Lucas would never forgive her. And what did it really matter, in the end? It had nothing to do with what had happened to Noah.
‘They’d almost gone,’ she protested. ‘They weren’t really bruises, anyway, just pressure marks. You could hardly see them.’
‘There may have been considerably more bruising beneath the skin,’ the doctor said. ‘It might not have become evident until after death, when the body stops healing itself. It’s certainly possible the marks could have become more pronounced post-mortem than you remember.’
‘But it happened days ago!’ Maddie cried, aghast. ‘He’s been perfectly fine since then. That couldn’t have caused … it couldn’t have caused …’
The doctor’s eyes filled with pity. ‘We won’t know until we’ve had a chance to examine him properly, I’m afraid.’
Maddie felt like she was going to pass out. She’d killed her baby. She’d dropped him and then she’d covered it up. She’d lied to her husband and slept while her baby died alone.
The policeman wrote something down in his notebook. ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened for him to get those marks, Mr Drummond?’
‘I wasn’t there. Maddie told me what had happened the next morning.’
‘Perhaps you could explain, then, Mrs Drummond?’
There was no inflection in his voice, but again Maddie felt the weight of the unspoken accusation. She had to tell them the truth. If there was any chance at all that Noah’s accident had killed him, she had to admit what had really happened now. They’d understand she hadn’t meant to hurt him. Even if they didn’t, what was the worst they could do? Throw her in jail? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now.
Except her children. She thought suddenly of Emily and Jacob, waiting for her to come home, scared and anxious. Jacob might not understand what was happening, but Emily would. They needed her. She should never have lied in the first place, but there was no going back now. If she told this policeman the truth, how did she know they wouldn’t arrest her, there and then? She couldn’t help Noah now, but she could help Emily and Jacob.
‘He got himself wedged in the corner of the cot during the night,’ she said, trying to still her nerves. ‘He gets very restless at night because of his colic. He was perfectly fine,’ she added quickly. ‘His cheek was just a bit red for a day or so, that’s all.’
‘Was his neck or head constricted at any point? Between the bars or in the gap between the side of the cot and the mattress, for example?’
‘No. He’d just wriggled himself into a corner, that’s all.’
The constable nodded. Maddie had no idea if he believed her or not.
‘I realise you all have a job to do, but my wife has explained what happened,’ Lucas said, with quiet dignity. ‘We’ve just lost our son. We need to get home to our other children. If you have any more questions, we’d be happy to answer them another time, but for now, we just want to say goodbye to our baby and go home to grieve with our family.’
The police constable got to his feet. ‘Of course. My sergeant says they’ve finished at your house, so you’re free to return. Again, Mr and Mrs Drummond, my very deepest condolences on your loss.’
‘I’m afraid I have to return to my rounds,’ the doctor said. ‘Jessica will take you to see Noah and explain the procedure from here. If you have any questions, please feel free to come and find me at any time.’ He extended his hand first to Lucas and then Maddie. ‘I really am so very sorry.’
‘Can you just tell me … would he … would he have suffered?’ she asked quietly.
‘No. No, it would have been very quick. I doubt he’d even have woken up. He wouldn’t have felt any pain.’
Maddie flinched. He might not have felt pain, but he’d died alone. The thought shredded her heart. She should have been there with him. She’d failed him when he’d needed her most.
Once they were alone, Jessica opened her folder and handed Lucas a small booklet. ‘I’m afraid there’s an awful lot of paperwork associated with death,’ she said apologetically. ‘This should help you through the majority of it. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to register Noah’s death until after the inquest.’ She gave Maddie another leaflet. ‘The Lullaby Trust offers support to families after the death of a child. They’re wonderful, and I recommend getting in touch with them when you feel ready. You can call their helpline any time and they have a number of online forums for parents who are in the same situation as you. They also have a network of parents who have lost a child in the past and have been trained to offer support to those similarly bereaved.’
‘There’s so much to take in,’ Maddie said.
Jessica smiled sadly. ‘I know. The review booklet in your packet outlines the steps you have to go through and will answer many of your questions. I’ll give you my contact details and, of course, you can get in touch any time.’
‘What about the funeral?’ Lucas asked. ‘When can we arrange that?’
‘Not until after the inquest, I’m afraid.’
Maddie felt the room swim. ‘He has to stay here till then?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Can we at least bring our other children here to say goodbye to him?’ asked Lucas.
‘No!’ Maddie exclaimed.
‘Actually, Maddie, we do recommend siblings be allowed to see their brother or sister,’ the counsellor said gently. ‘Children are very literal. They need to see what death means. It helps them understand what’s happened and that the baby has really died and isn’t coming back.’
Maddie choked back a sob. Lucas reached for her hand and she gripped his fingers, too distraught to speak.
Jessica picked up her folder. ‘If you’d like, I can also make footprints of his hands and feet, as keepsakes. Would you like a lock of his hair as a memento? I can arrange that, too.’
‘Yes, we’d like that,’ Lucas said hoarsely, as Maddie nodded.
‘I’ll have everything sent on to you,’ Jessica said. ‘If you’re ready, I’ll take you to see him now.’
Maddie clutched Lucas’s hand as they followed Jessica back through the hospital foyer towards the lifts. All these people going about their normal daily lives. Queueing for coffee, reading newspapers, checking emails, as if nothing had happened. As if her baby hadn’t just died. That woman dragging her screaming toddler away from the sweet counter in the hospital gift shop had no idea how lucky she was that her little girl was still alive. Right now, she was probably wondering why she’d bothered having children. She didn’t realise the happiness she took for granted could be snatched away in an instant.
A couple with a newborn in a plastic car seat followed them into the crowded lift, wearing the proud, self-conscious expressions of new parents. The young mother fussed with the baby’s blue blanket, tucking it tightly around his crumpled red face. It doesn’t matter what you do, Maddie wanted to tell her, you can’t keep your baby safe. You can do everything right: you can keep his head warm and test his bathwater with your elbow and put him to sleep on his back and keep small parts out of reach and it still won’t be enough. It will never be enough, because while you’re sleeping, death can steal your baby without you even knowing.
Lucas saw her staring. He moved to block her view and she buried her face in his chest. Her legs shook and she would have fallen if he hadn’t held her.
When the lift doors opened, Jessica led them along a labyrinth of hospital corridors and then stopped by a plain, unmarked door. ‘I want you to prepare yourselves,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s going to be a shock, seeing him again.’
‘Can we hold him?’ Lucas asked.
‘If you’d like to. It can be very upsetting for some parents. He won’t be warm, the way you expect. But you can spend as much time with him as you need. After you’ve gone, I’ll take the hand and footprints and a lock of his hair. You can bring your other children back later today or tomorrow to say goodbye to him. There’s a very helpful leaflet in the packet I handed you about explaining death to very young children.’
Lucas turned to Maddie. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
She nodded bravely, her chest suddenly tight. Her breath was coming in shallow gasps. It took every ounce of her resolve not to turn and run away.
Jessica opened the door. The room was bright and well-lit, painted a soft lilac with a frieze of white lilies running midway around the wall. A matching blind filtered sunshine from the small window. It reminded Maddie achingly of the hospital room she’d had when Noah was born.
Summoning all her courage, she gripped Lucas’s hand and approached the small transparent cot in the centre of the room. It looked exactly like the ones in the maternity ward. A tiny figure lay swaddled in the middle of it. The stillness in the room was tangible. This wasn’t a child who was sleeping. The essence that had been Noah had palpably gone.
Maddie gazed down at the pale white face, as cold and inanimate as a carving. Two livid purple bruises stood out shockingly against his blue-white skin and she wondered how she could have not noticed them before. He looked like a little waxwork doll, not human at all.
And finally she understood her baby was dead.
Lydia
She’s never seen Mae this angry. Her mother shouts so loud that spit comes out of her mouth and her eyes almost pop out of her head. Do you know what you’ve put me through, you little cunt? Bowing and scraping to them stuck-up bastards to get you back. Just to keep a bleeding roof over me head!
Mae makes her take off the dress Jean gave her, and the shoes, and refuses to let her put on her old clothes, so she has to sit, shivering, in the corner of the room in her underwear. You think you’re better than me, do you, with your fancy airs and graces and your posh dresses, you’d better think again, you’re nothing without me, nothing, do you hear me, you little piece of shit?
The gloomy house seems even darker and more scary now. It smells bad and there are mice and spiders everywhere. Every night, she cries herself to sleep on the bare scratchy mattress, trying not to think about the pink sheets or the way Jean used to stroke her hair and tuck her into bed. It doesn’t take long for the hunger pangs to come back, gnawing away at her insides. When Mae beats her for sneaking downstairs for a drink of water, she doesn’t even bother to protect herself. She just wants it to be over.
Mae has so many special friends these days, she can’t keep track. They don’t just come at night, now, they come at all hours, with their big bellies and greasy hair and their way of looking at her that makes her skin feel itchy like it’s covered with bugs. She sees them giving Mae money sometimes and cigarettes.
One day, she goes to the bathroom and walks in on one of the men, bare-chested, doing up his trousers. She sees his thing, it’s all white, unnaturally white, like a strange pale worm curled up in a nest of brown hair, and she can’t stop staring even though it makes her feel sick to look at it. He laughs, do you want some girlie, you want some of this? and she turns and runs out of the bathroom.
But Mae is waiting. How much? Mae asks the man. He laughs again, but Mae doesn’t laugh, her eyes narrow and her face gets that look, like when she strangled the ducks in the bath with her bare hands. Come on Jimmy, how much?
Time to earn your keep, Mae tells her. She drags her by the hair into her bedroom, and it smells bad in here, sweaty and damp and something else, something that makes her wrinkle her nose in disgust. Mae’s never let her come in here before. There is a red scarf thrown over the lamp on the dresser and strange pictures on the walls. She tries to free herself from Mae, she has a really bad feeling in the pit of her stomach – danger danger – but Mae smacks her around the head so hard her ears ring and she feels dizzy, and the man is here and the two of them pick her up and toss her on the bed as if she is as light as a kitten.
Then Mae leaves her alone with the man, and she starts to cry, she’s scared, so scared, and she tries to scramble away across the bed, but the man is too quick for her, he catches her by her skinny ankle and drags her back across the bed and pins her down, and she closes her eyes tight, tight. If she keeps them shut, maybe none of this will be real.
She’ll wake up in her pretty bed with the pink sheets and none of this will be real.
Chapter 12
Saturday noon
She couldn’t stop screaming. She refused to look at the cold, dead baby in the crib, the full enormity of her loss finally hitting home. Lucas wrapped his arms around her, but she thrashed against him, unable and unwilling to be comforted. In the end, one of the doctors prescribed some kind of tranquilliser for her, Valium or Xanax, by this stage Maddie didn’t care; she simply took what they gave her, praying it’d knock her out, praying she’d wake up and find this had all been a hideous nightmare, nothing but a bad dream.
But everything stayed savagely real. She and Lucas left the hospital without Noah, her arms horribly empty, travelling home together in silence in the back of a taxi. Mercifully, the driver didn’t try to talk to them, depositing them outside their house with a sympathetic discretion that suggested he’d worked the hospital route before.
Maddie glanced up at the nursery window as they got out of the cab. It was still thrown open from where she must have flung it wide to shout down to Lucas for help. Was that really just six hours ago? Already, it seemed to belong to a different life.
The house was grimly quiet when they let themselves in. Emily and Jacob were at her mother’s and the police had gone. It all seemed so eerily normal. Dirty plates from last night still lay soaking in greasy water in the sink. Damp washing sat in a plastic laundry basket, waiting to go into the dryer. Sarah had put Noah’s changing bag away out of sight, but his bottles were still lined up on the kitchen windowsill and his bouncer remained in its usual place in a safe, draught-free corner of the kitchen, his favourite blanket folded neatly across it ready for him.