Little Disasters

by Sarah Vaughan

  And Jess cannot say: Yes, but did you ever imagine killing your baby? Did you check and double-check you hadn’t overdosed her on Calpol; that you hadn’t poured bleach into her bottle; that she wasn’t being suffocated by soft toys in her cot? That you hadn’t inadvertently smothered her? There seems such a chasm between her and Mel’s experiences.

  Luckily her friend seems oblivious, and is distracted by their arrival at the park.

  ‘Right – let’s run these puppies around, shall we?’

  Mel has always maintained small boys are like dogs who need ample exercise to be biddable. Frankie has never seemed biddable – parenting him is like balancing on a high-tension tightrope – but perhaps that is a failure of Jess’s parenting rather than anything else.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, her voice strained, as she focuses on being hyper-vigilant, on not letting that old man sitting on the bench anywhere near them. (Potential paedophiles are a new source of concern; she suspects any man who smiles at her baby daughter.) ‘Let’s run them around.’

  LIZ

  Monday 22 January, 2018, 7.10 a.m.

  Eleven

  ‘Bad night?’ Nick asks as we dance around each other in the kitchen, buttering toast, slurping tea, warming milk – all with an eye on the clock and the knowledge we have less than ten minutes before we’re out of the door.

  ‘I woke about three-thirty: couldn’t stop thinking about Jess.’ I gulp my hot drink then wipe crumbs from the surfaces, my actions brisk and efficient. Come on, my body language tells my family. I haven’t got all day.

  The children eat languidly, Rosa licking the butter off a crumpet, eyes closed as she enjoys the sensuous experience.

  ‘Oi – I’m using that knife,’ Sam protests, spoiling the moment as he leans across.

  ‘There’s another one in front of you,’ she says, glowering at his apparent incompetence.

  ‘Oh – OK.’ He is quickly mollified and resumes buttering. They both look as if they could sit here all day.

  ‘I kept thinking about Jess,’ I continue, one eye on Rosa, who is skilled at picking up on adult conversations. ‘It’s the strategy meeting this morning.’

  ‘To decide if they should investigate further?’

  ‘Yep.’ I start stacking the dishwasher, clinking a mug and almost chipping a plate. ‘Not that I’m allowed to attend. The detective’s pretty tough – I’ve met her on a previous case – and Neil’s so hardline.’ I drop my voice to a whisper, glancing at the children, but they’re bickering over who has the Marmite. ‘I feel so bloody impotent: I want to tell them about the family we know – but that’s not possible because I can’t even be there.’

  Nick drops a kiss on the top of my head, and I lean against him a second, gaining some comfort from his warmth, his familiarity. He smells of granary toast and I breathe this wholesomeness in.

  ‘Any decision is not your responsibility,’ he says. ‘You had to agree to refer her. There was no other option – that’s what you told me, isn’t it?’

  I draw away and continue loading the rest of the dirty crockery. It’s what I’ve told myself all weekend, what I discussed with him on Saturday night once the children were in bed, but it sounds too pat repeated back like this.

  ‘It doesn’t feel that simple,’ I say as I fill the children’s water bottles and grab them both an apple I know will be forgotten in the bottom of their bags.

  My husband smiles at me.

  ‘What? I need to go.’ I shouldn’t have brought this up again.

  ‘You need to stop being so hard on yourself.’

  He’s right, of course, and normally I’m able to compartmentalise home and work. I have to. I wouldn’t be able to survive if I obsessed about each patient. But Betsey’s injury feels more personal, and it’s stirred up half-hidden memories. I hardly slept last night: duvet twisted round my body, limbs greased with sweat as I imagined Jess screaming that she hated me, her mouth a tunnel I fell into until I woke, heart pounding. I can’t pretend I’m viewing this dispassionately.

  ‘OK, I’ll try,’ I say, neutrally, because I’m running late now and I know he’s only being protective. I give him a kiss.

  ‘It’ll be all right.’

  ‘Yeah – I know.’

  But as I pull on my coat, I can’t shake the feeling I’m largely responsible for causing Jess and Ed this grief.

  *

  I’m properly late when I get to the hospital, just after eight-thirty. My phone rings with my mother’s number. I answer it the moment before it cuts to answerphone, wrestling with my spilling bag and jamming it against my ear. I’m in the Victorian part of the building, all vents and pipes discharging steam, and swing doors leading to labyrinthine corridors. A patient, wearing pyjamas and attached to a drip, stands puffing on a cigarette, and I move away, wary of being heard.

  ‘Lizzie? Li-zzie?’

  ‘Mum. Are you all right?’ I’d left a message for her on Saturday and had meant to try again yesterday. It’s unusual for her to call me this early in the morning. She sounds panicked, her speech a little slurred.

  ‘I’ve just bashed my face.’

  ‘You’ve just bashed your face?’

  ‘I must have opened a cupboard door into it, in the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry. Is it badly bruised?’

  ‘My eye is, and my cheekbone’s cut.’

  ‘That must have been scary. Was there much blood?’ Faces can bleed profusely.

  ‘Oh . . .’ A pause while she thinks about it. ‘Well, not too much.’

  ‘And has it stopped bleeding, now?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve put a bit of tissue on it.’

  ‘OK. Do you think you need to come into A&E for stitches? I’m at work but I could call a taxi for you.’

  ‘Oh no. I don’t want to make a fuss.’ She makes it sound as if I’m overreacting. ‘I just thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘I do. Of course I do. Do you want me to drop round tonight?’ She only lives three miles away but Nick has a staff meeting and I’ll have to wait until he’s finished. I don’t take our children to her flat.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. No.’ She audibly recoils from the idea.

  I breathe deeply, balancing my automatic concern with my need to maintain some distance. ‘I’ll call you when I’m finished but will you promise me you’ll get a taxi here, or go to your GP, if you feel worse?’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I wish I hadn’t called now.’ Her irritation is palpable. She has always been like this: prone to swerving from one response to another. As a child, it was impossible to know where I stood.

  ‘I’m glad you did. I want to know. You hadn’t hurt yourself when you called me on Saturday, had you?’

  ‘I didn’t call you on Saturday!’ She is affronted. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’

  ‘Well – you . . .’

  ‘I didn’t call.’ She is emphatic. ‘I think I’d know if I called or not, wouldn’t I? Or do you think I’m losing my marbles, is that it?’

  I remain silent. There’s no point in arguing with her, particularly when she’s like this.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ she chunters, having failed to goad me into a reaction, and then, as if I’m keeping her: ‘Look, I need to go now.’ And she hangs up abruptly.

  I feel aggrieved, as I often do at the end of our conversations. Without meaning to, I pick at a hangnail, ripping it so that it throbs angrily. I must maintain my boundaries and not get sucked into her usual games. This one feels like an emotional version of Grandmother’s Footsteps: me, trying to inch my way closer, only to be chased furiously away.

  I’m relieved to be at work, where I can immerse myself, and where I know I’m valued. Shoulders back, head up, I thrust open the hospital’s door. It swings forward with a clatter, the handle whacking the wall, and denting the plaster. And I realise that, in my anger and frustration, I’ve applied too much force.

  *

  Betsey lies in her cot by the window, dozing and no long
er unsettled. I watch her, after the ward round and once Neil’s retreated to the strategy meeting, wondering if there’s an innocent explanation for what’s happened here.

  She looks so peaceful, now she’s asleep: her cheek flat against the mattress, her bottom in the air like a sheepdog at rest. She will get better, I remind myself: the haematoma should resolve although there remains the risk of seizures, as this collection of clotted cells congeals, dries and breaks down. Will this happen – and will they be fleeting, or an ongoing issue? There’s no way of knowing, quite now.

  I massage my temples as I run through whether we could possibly be missing something crucial. Something that means any suspicion could be lifted from Jess and Ed. Maybe she bleeds easily from haemophilia? Could she have brittle bones or rickets? Back at the computer, I check her blood results: her platelet count and clotting profile is normal and so is her bone profile and levels of vitamin D.

  Neil and Fousia are still in their meeting with Cat, Lucy and the safeguarding lead, Kate Walsh, and so I watch Betsey a little longer, regretting not knowing her in happier times. She’s such a delicious baby – dimple-cheeked, with delicate features – and I imagine her chortling, kicking her creased thighs up high. Then I imagine her screaming. Rosa was mercurial at this age, her sunniest moods changing in an instant. A delayed sleep, a late meal, a missed feed: any of these were enough to trigger tears or a tantrum. Before she was admitted, was Betsey like this?

  I must get on with my work but as I leave, the mother of the baby in the next bay catches my eye.

  ‘He’s so much better,’ says Tania Bryce, nodding to the cot where seven-month-old Daniel lies on his back, blowing bubbles and flexing his Babygroed legs. His parents rushed him in late on Thursday after he appeared to have stopped breathing. He’d contracted bronchiolitis. But his oxygen SATs levels are now back to normal and he should be discharged in the next couple of days.

  ‘You gave your mummy quite a shock,’ I tell her baby now as he smiles with delight.

  He gurgles back as if he can’t quite believe life can be this exciting.

  ‘Yes, you did.’ I smile down at him and he starfishes his fingers, twisting his hands against the light.

  ‘You can say that again!’ His mother blows out her cheeks in exaggerated relief, and then her voice breaks. ‘I thought we would lose him.’

  ‘You did absolutely the right thing in bringing him in. And he was much better overnight, wasn’t he?’

  Tania, who has barely left his bedside since he was admitted, nods. A first-time mum, she delayed coming in for fear of being perceived as fussing. Now, she can’t forgive herself for not listening to her instinct.

  ‘I just wish I’d brought him in earlier . . .’ she says.

  ‘Hey, it’s OK,’ I say, crouching down. She gives me a watery grin, tears welling at their ordeal being over. ‘Daniel got exactly the right treatment,’ I tell her. ‘He’s off the oxygen. We’ll monitor him but he’ll be fine.’

  There’s a bustle of activity down the corridor, and I look up to see Lucy and Cat leave the paediatric meeting room. I say goodbye to Tania and get to the nurses’ station as they walk down the corridor, Cat walking decisively, Lucy scurrying to match her pace. A skinny woman with long, shiny hair, Lucy dresses like Sam’s teacher: black trousers, a bottle-green crew-neck with a polka dot scarf that hangs loosely, and bangles that jangle when she gesticulates. She seems too gentle to deal with potentially abusive parents, and yet she must have an inner steel: something that drove her to choose this profession, and enables her to stand up to parents, including articulate middle-class ones like Ed and Jess who might threaten to sue. Though she’s not harsh like Cat – who once told me ‘we’ll get the bastards’ when referring to parents in a previous case – Lucy wields some power. She’s the person who could take Betsey, and Kit and Frankie, from Jess’s care.

  ‘Anything you can tell me?’ I smile winningly at Neil, who has followed them and is now looking up a patient’s notes on the computer.

  ‘Hmmph?’ His eyebrows knit in disapproval.

  ‘About Betsey Curtis? Can you tell me anything about the plans for her care?’

  ‘We’ll keep her in for another twenty-four to forty-eight hours to ensure she doesn’t knock herself and risk a further bleed, or experience seizures.’

  ‘And then?’

  His cool blue eyes assess me and he makes me wait. He is such a stickler for procedure that he’s not going to give me any hint of police suspicions.

  ‘Then it’s a matter for our good colleagues in the police and social services,’ he says. ‘But suffice to say, the mother should not be given unsupervised access to her children – either at home or in the hospital. When she visits, access should continue to be prearranged and she should be accompanied by another social worker or Miss Stone.’

  He stalks off, and it feels as if he sucks the oxygen from the room, leaving me light-headed. Jess still can’t see Betsey unscheduled or alone. She will have signed a police undertaking not to do this over the weekend, but now it’s been shored up: confirmation that they suspect her of inflicting harm.

  I sidle up to Fousia.

  ‘He’s in a foul mood,’ I whisper, conspiratorially.

  ‘When isn’t he?’

  ‘He seems convinced it’s a non-accidental injury.’

  ‘Yep.’ She nods in the direction of the doctors’ room, where there’s little risk of our being overheard.

  I follow her, hugely grateful that she’s prepared to fill me in.

  ‘You didn’t get any of this from me, OK?’ she says, her expression stern. Childless and five years younger than me, she has so far managed not to antagonise Neil in her six months working in the department, and understandably wants to keep it this way.

  ‘Of course not. Can you just tell me what’s driving this? Is there evidence from the other children’s medical examinations?’

  ‘They were fine and there’s nothing sinister in the records – no previous contact with social services, no indication of chaotic behaviour, no evidence of historic fractures from the skeletal survey, either.’

  ‘Oh, thank God.’ I have been wondering if I’d shut my eyes to sustained abuse but this is hugely reassuring. ‘So why do they think this justifies further investigation?’ I say.

  ‘It’s Cat Rustin. She argued strongly for this. She thinks Mrs Curtis’s story doesn’t stack up.’

  ‘But why?’

  Fousia checks that no one is likely to come in.

  ‘Look – promise I didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘They interviewed the brother who was in the room when Betsey fell over.’

  ‘Frankie, the younger boy?’

  She nods. ‘Apparently, he was hugely distressed, very distracted, and not very forthcoming, but he did contradict something his mother said.

  ‘According to Cat, Mrs Curtis said he was sitting looking out towards the garden when Betsey slipped so didn’t witness what happened. But he said he was in his usual seat at the table, so looking towards the fridge and his sister – and yet he saw nothing. He didn’t see her slip or fall.’

  My stomach tightens. Frankie is a very literal child, and he’ll want to please any figure in authority. He’ll have been scared of them, however gently they took the interview, and he wouldn’t contemplate lying. However much he adores his mother, his instinct will have been to tell the truth.

  ‘You can see why they’re concerned, right?’ Fousia peers at me, her smooth brow wrinkling.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘One of them is lying. The boy or the mother. And the police think that it’s her.’

  JESS

  Monday 22 January, 11 a.m.

  Twelve

  ‘You want my sister to look after my children?’

  When Lucy Stone breaks the news to her that her sister Martha is willing to move into the family home and look after the children as an ‘approved adult’, Jess can’t believe what she i
s saying. She tries not to sound unreasonable, but her tone betrays her disbelief.

  Lucy fumbles for a tissue in her bag. She has a cold. Jess hears the phlegm bubble up in her nose as she blows it with a fruity squeak. She moves her own chair back, flinching at the sudden, nails-down-the-blackboard scrape against the kitchen floor. The social worker tucks the tissue up her sleeve and looks up, her face blanketed in compassion. ‘In cases where there are safeguarding concerns, we have to look for alternative care for any other children in the family,’ she says.

  ‘Safeguarding concerns? You think I might harm Frankie or Kit?’ Though the phrase was used on Saturday, when the boys were sent to stay with Mel, and when she signed the undertaking not to see Bets alone, it is only now that its meaning swims into focus. Jess hears her voice rise in incredulity as Lucy fails to answer and blows her nose again.

  The boys have stayed with Mel the past two nights. Lucy had suggested that they go there on Saturday once it became clear that there would be further meetings, but Jess had told herself their absence was for largely practical reasons. They think you’re a bad mother. Yes – but not to Frankie or Kit, surely? It’s her mothering of Betsey they’re concerned about, not of them.

  She glances from Lucy to her husband, her disbelief caught in her chest like something she needs to cough up, and waits for him to defend her; to insist this is nonsense.

  Ed tries to smile. He knows he should be smoothing the situation down; charming the social worker into being reasonable and seeing things from their point of view as he is usually so adept at doing, when there’s been a mix-up with a holiday booking, for instance, or a waiter brings the wrong meal. But there’s no rulebook for a scenario like this. The terrain is so unknown, they are both floundering: him not knowing how to handle this professional, who he has failed to charm or impress with the veiled threat of having spoken to a friend who’s a solicitor; her not knowing how to react at all. It’s as if they’ve stumbled into a patch of boggy moorland, and with each cack-handed, tremulous step, risk sinking deeper.