by Julie Corbin
‘I did my research,’ she says. ‘I went into a pharmacy and asked them how to correctly write a prescription. I said it was for a part I was playing and they were surprisingly helpful. And then I spent a few days practising your signature. And bingo, here’s the finished article. What do you think, Dr Somers? Does it pass muster?’
‘So you’ve been very clever,’ I say, laying the prescription down on the table. ‘What’s the point of it?’
‘It’s my back-up plan. Look, I don’t want to ruin you – I just want people to see you for who you are and, short of taking a time machine back to 1993, we’re stuck with the fact that my mother died and you caused it.’
‘I don’t see what the prescriptions have to do with your mother’s death.’
‘Well . . . as I said, they’re my back-up. I’ve been thinking a lot about how this can be made right and I’ve hit upon an idea.’
‘And?’
‘Over the past nine months there’ve been three full-page articles about you in the Edinburgh Courier, all singing your praises. I want you to go and see the journalist who wrote them – she’s called Carys Blakemore, isn’t she? – and have her put the record straight.’
‘You want me to tell Carys about your mother’s death?’
‘Yes. All of it. How and why she died, what happened to my father and to me. Let people see that you’re not perfect.’
I think about what this would mean for my career. My work as a GP would continue. I expect some of my patients would be shocked; others would feel it was too long ago for it to be relevant. The centre is a different matter, though. We’re pulling in more funding because my profile looks deserving, and without a squeaky clean past, some of the donors are bound to opt out.
‘I can’t do that,’ I say to Kirsty. ‘The negative publicity would jeopardise the centre’s work.’
‘At the moment, there are two other prescriptions, just like this one, waiting to be handed in to a chemist. They both have Tess’s name on them.’
‘So?’ I shrug. ‘I’ll tell the police that you stole them and forged my signature.’
‘That’s what I want you to do. Then Tess will say you made her cooperate with you because you wanted the drugs for yourself.’
I give a short laugh. ‘The police aren’t going to believe Tess over me!’
‘Not solely. But those guys I live with? They owe me a couple of favours. One good thing about having a dead mother is that I have money from the insurance policy she left me. I pay their rent; they help me out, get me drugs, set stuff up for me. They would lie for me too. I know they would. I’ll ask them to start a whispering campaign. A word here, another word there and suddenly our celebrity doctor isn’t all she seems.’
‘No one is going to believe that I take drugs.’
‘Why not? People do that, you know. They turn to drugs when they’re unhappy. You’re recently divorced. You’re hard up. You spend a lot of evenings on your own. You wouldn’t be the first doctor to become addicted to illegal substances.’ Her eyes bore into mine. ‘I’ve seen you in action. There’s nothing more important to you than your family and your job, and both would suffer. I could throw enough doubt on your character for your carefully constructed world to collapse. Lauren already thinks you’re a liar. How much worse would this make it?’
Benson, who’s been lying in his bed close to my feet, senses the tension in the room and jumps up beside me, a low growl in his throat. ‘My thoughts exactly, Benson,’ I say and lean in to Kirsty until we’re only inches apart. ‘Get out of my house,’ I say quietly.
She smiles. ‘It could take you years to gain Lauren’s trust again. She’s already lost some of her faith in you.’ Benson growls a little louder and Kirsty stands up. ‘You have until the end of today to get in touch with the journalist. The article needs to be in the paper next week and then you’ll have paid me and my mother back. Think about it, Dr Somers. Sure you can fight your corner but remember – mud sticks.’
The front door slams as she leaves.
‘Sweet Jesus.’ I rest my elbows on the table and rub my forehead with my fingers. Kirsty’s been in and out of my house enough over the past nine months to know that my children and my job are all I have. But what she can’t possibly know is that her threat is made doubly dangerous because of Phil’s bid for shared custody. I can’t have any links to illegal drug use because, if I do, Phil will use it against me, citing my past behaviour as evidence.
I think about what my solicitor told me on the phone earlier. The crux of it was that the court would only take another look at custody arrangements if I’m no longer providing a stable environment for the children. I wish I could trust Phil not to go for the jugular but I can’t. I know that if he gets wind of any wrongdoing on my part, he’ll use the information and I’ll risk losing custody of Lauren.
Sure, handwriting experts could detect that my signature was forged. And with sustained questioning, Tess would be bound to crack and confess that I had nothing to do with the prescriptions. I’m sure Kirsty could get her friends to lie for her, but if they were up against a doctor of good moral character then would their testimony be believed?
No. Except that opposing counsel could argue that ‘on the surface, Olivia Somers appears to be solid gold, but when one delves a little deeper, one finds dubious personal -incidents, including a period of Class B drug abuse in her mid-twenties, that throw doubt upon her character.’
16
Robbie’s birth was a difficult one. A fortnight before my due date, I was admitted to hospital with pre-eclampsia. My blood pressure was through the roof and there was protein in my urine. I stayed on the ward for the whole two weeks before they decided that it was time to induce me. When labour started I agreed to an epidural because it was recommended as a way to bring down my blood pressure. ‘But now I might not feel the urge to push,’ I said to Leila. We’d been going to antenatal classes together and were both hoping for natural births. ‘I don’t want to end up with a forceps delivery.’
‘It’s more important to get your BP down, though, isn’t it?’ Leila said, and from a medical standpoint I agreed with her.
The labour progressed slowly and then the baby started to show signs of foetal distress. I ended up with Keilland’s rotational forceps, the baby’s head turned around while he was still inside me and then hauled down the birth canal, dragged into the world with metal instruments gripping on to his precious, little head. By this time I’d drifted into unconsciousness because I’d lost so much blood, and when I came round, Leila was holding one of my hands and Phil the other. I could see that Leila had been crying.
‘Is the baby okay?’ I said.
‘He’s a beautiful boy,’ Phil told me, and he wheeled the Perspex cot closer so that I could take a look. ‘Seven pounds, six ounces; little bit of jaundice but otherwise absolutely fine.’
‘Can I hold him?’
‘Of course!’ Phil laughed, and Leila helped me sit up in bed. I felt dizzy and had to wait for several seconds to let my head clear, and then Phil rested my son on my lap, keeping his hand around the back of the baby’s head as a support. The baby was wearing a hospital gown, which resembled a mini cotton dress with ties at the back, and he had on a tiny nappy, his scrawny legs growing out of the bottom of it. ‘He’s long,’ I said.
‘Aye, he’s going to be tall,’ Leila said.
Wrapped around one of his perfect miniature feet was his nametag, which I couldn’t read because my eyes were misty and wouldn’t focus on the letters. My arms felt heavy but I managed to bring them under his body so that I could snuggle him up towards my breast. Phil took his hand away from around the baby’s head and I saw the purple bruising and misshapen cranium that’s typical of a forceps delivery. I couldn’t bear it. I started to cry, horrified that my sweet little boy had come into the world this way. I began gabbling to Phil and Leila about forceps complications: the risk of intracranial bleeding or cranial fracture.
‘He’s fine, Liv,’
Phil soothed. ‘He’s just a bit bruised, that’s all.’
‘Has he opened his eyes? Is he responding to stimuli?’
‘He’s tired, poor little man. He’s had a busy day.’
Leila and Phil crooned over him while I worried. Could I not have pushed a bit harder? Would it have been better if I’d had a Caesarean section? What if he had lasting damage?
‘Your haemoglobin’s only eight point two,’ Phil told me. ‘They’ll give you a couple of units of blood and you’ll feel much better after that.’
When the second bag of blood was going in to my vein, my temperature climbed two degrees in thirty minutes. ‘Your body’s not happy,’ the nurse told me. ‘We’ll have to abandon the transfusion. A couple of weeks on iron tablets and you’ll be right as rain.’
I left hospital after six days feeling as if I’d been cast adrift in foreign seas. Phil couldn’t take any more time off and Leila and Archie had moved across town. She didn’t have a car back then and was now so heavily pregnant that getting on and off buses was a chore. I didn’t have a car either and lived up two flights of stairs. I’d had problems with my sacral joints when I was pregnant and, even though I’d now had the baby, it still wasn’t getting any better. Most days I had shooting sciatic pains down my right leg and when it was really troubling me I walked with a limp, barely able to lift my leg off the ground. Going to the local shops was a mission in itself, as I juggled bags and baby and my sore leg. The thought of taking the baby on a bus to visit Leila was more than I could cope with.
Robbie’s first few weeks, I felt as if I was running to catch up. Other mothers spoke about the rapturous joy on seeing their baby for the first time and I felt as though I might be rumbled because, although I knew I loved him, I looked at the tiny red-faced child and felt scared. Responsibility was written in neon-bright letters across his forehead and I was terrified I’d get it wrong. I kept his crib close to my side of the bed and I’d wake at night with pins and needles in my hand because it would be hanging into his crib, touching his firm little body, making sure he was still breathing.
Phil had an explanation for my fears. I had been poorly mothered myself and my father was too much of a man’s man. So it would take a bit of learning, but heavens above! – I was a doctor, a member of the caring profession – I’d be fine.
The midwife was kind and motherly and she came to visit every day for a week. I envied her ease with my baby. I watched her and learnt from her but still I was all fingers and thumbs and Robbie was forever sliding in the water when I bathed him. I had no idea how I ended up being so utterly inept. I’d been confident with babies when I was training but now it was as if I’d never even seen one, never mind held one.
‘You are taking your iron tablets now, aren’t you?’ the midwife asked me. ‘Your haemoglobin will still be low and that affects your energy levels, and energy levels affect confidence.’ She gave me a hug. ‘You’re doing fine, Olivia. Don’t be too hard on yourself.’
Phil was a natural father and, when he was home, he handled his baby as though he’d been doing it all his life. He held Robbie’s body with one confident hand, the tiny sleepy head snuggled into the crook of his neck as he wandered round the house: answering the phone, cooking dinner, reading psychiatric journals. I tried to copy Phil but Robbie’s head was forever flopping to one side and my hand wasn’t large enough to cover his whole back and hold him safe.
I was determined to breastfeed but very quickly my nipples were red raw with his fierce sucking. The midwife told me I needed to be firmer with him. ‘Don’t let him latch on for too long. He needs to feed and then come off.’
Easier said than done. He’d suck hard, then toy with my nipple, suck again. Then he’d fall asleep. I’d change him, wake him up, put him on the other breast, but he’d get crotchety and refuse to take a full feed. And usually after feeding, he wriggled and struggled and then he’d start to wail, the loud animal cries of a creature who’d been abandoned. ‘I think my milk must be off,’ I told the health visitor.
She laughed. ‘He’s just a bit colicky, that’s all.’ She was the epitome of common sense. ‘Are you watching what you’re eating and drinking?’
I was watching what I was eating and drinking. I was doing everything everyone told me. I was trying to relax. I was making sure we both got fresh air and socialised with other mothers. I introduced routine and rhythm into his life and I made sure he got loads of cuddles and fun time. But none of that helped. He wasn’t gaining weight so it was suggested I supplement with a bottle. ‘He’s a hungry boy. It’s not your fault,’ the health visitor said. ‘Don’t take it personally.’
When Phil came home to find half a dozen bottles and a sterilising unit in the kitchen, he stood with open mouth. ‘What’s this for?’
‘He’s not gaining weight. I’ve to supplement feeds.’
‘He looks all right to me,’ Phil said. ‘I think you should persevere for a bit longer.’
‘Well, that’s easy for you to say!’ I shouted. ‘Because you’re not the one with cracked nipples and a desperate need to sleep!’
‘He’s a baby, Liv!’ He gave me one of his disappointed looks. ‘Honestly, how hard can it be?’
Phil walked out of the kitchen and I spent a minute crying and feeling pathetic and then another minute deciding that I’d give Robbie formula and to hell with Phil’s opinion. I started Robbie on a mid-morning bottle and one before bedtime and within days he made his preference clear. He reared away from my breast and howled because all he wanted was the rubber teat. As soon as he caught it in his mouth, he sucked with great gusto then fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.
I was determined not to feel a failure, but Phil gave me the silent treatment for a while, and when I tried to talk to him about it he told me, ‘I didn’t see you as a quitter.’
‘Well, perhaps if you were home more . . .’
‘Somebody has to earn the money.’
‘I feel isolated, Phil!’
‘Well join some clubs, or something! Visit Leila!’ He left the room again, shouting out, ‘Jesus, Liv! You’re an intelligent woman, work it out!’
I was already in a couple of mother and baby groups and I was slowly making friends, but mostly the chat seemed unnecessarily competitive – my baby can do this, my baby can do that. All I wanted was to feel normal and most of the time I left feeling inadequate.
Leila and I made an effort to see each other once a week but she was on course to become a GP and had returned to work when Mark was just two months old. And with such a large extended family all living in Edinburgh, she was spoilt for childcare and for company. I hadn’t even completed my final residency yet and planned to return to work when Robbie was six months old. I wasn’t sure whether I was looking forward to it or not, because much as I still wanted to be a doctor, I hadn’t exactly left on a high. I had been well and truly hammered for my own fallibility. A woman was dead and no amount of studying or practising or striving to be an exemplary doctor was ever going to change that. And now that my own baby was born I couldn’t help but think about the other life lost along with Sandy’s – her newborn son’s. At times when I held Robbie, I felt the ghost of another mother and another baby just beyond my reach. I had to work hard not to let it get me down but some days the enormity of my mistake clung to me, infecting the air like city smog until it was all I could do not to hide under the covers and cry.
Still, I tried to take my silver linings where I could find them, and there were two advantages to not breastfeeding: Robbie slept better and so, therefore, did I; and I was able to take painkillers for my aching leg – not that they helped much. I’d attended a course of physio, but there was still no improvement; in fact, if anything, my leg was worse than ever. One afternoon I’d taken Robbie to the park and met a couple of other mothers there, done some shopping, and by the time I got home, I was almost crying with the pain, the prescribed anti-inflammatories barely knocking the edge off it.
I stood in the sta
irwell wrestling Robbie out of his buggy, but he was over four hours without a feed and in the middle of a sustained bout of hungry wailing. Since he’d started on the bottle, he’d grown heavier, and I managed to hoist him on to my shoulder but, for the life of me, couldn’t manage the bags as well. My heart started to race and within seconds I was sweating and gulping down an almost overwhelming feeling of incompetence. And it was at times like this that Sandy’s spectre taunted me – she was born to be a mother. But me? I was just playing at it.
The main door opened and our neighbour came in. His name was Ben but everyone called him Porky. ‘Because of my belly,’ he’d told me the first time we met. ‘Give me a pie and I’m happy.’
‘Need a hand there, Liv?’
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. He took Robbie off my shoulder, lifted the bags and went ahead of me up the stairs. I managed to get myself up to my front door but by then I was struggling to hold back tears. ‘Sorry, it’s my leg.’ I told him about my problems with sciatica. ‘Every movement seems to aggravate it.’
‘I had that a few years ago when I was still playing rugby.’ He took my key from me and unlocked the door. ‘It’s a killer. Had to give up the game, but even then it took a long time to shift it.’ He followed me inside. ‘Let me help you get the wee man sorted.’
He gave Robbie a bottle and then I changed him and settled him into his crib for a nap while Porky put the shopping away. ‘Got some sticky doughnuts back at my place if you want to come over.’
‘Love to.’ I put my slippers on and Porky lifted Robbie’s crib and we went across the landing. We’d been in Porky’s flat before, Robbie and I. He’d taken us in when we were having the boiler replaced and again a couple of weeks later when my TV was on the blink. He lived with a couple of other post-grad students – they were all doing PhDs – and the atmosphere in the flat was always lively without being too chaotic.