by Emily Gunnis
Harvey felt his shoulders soften. He had never seen Adam show any emotion at all and he had no idea how to react. ‘Well, you’re here now, and Jessie seems to be doing okay by the looks of things.’
‘What about the baby?’ Adam asked.
‘We don’t know yet, she’s pretty poorly,’ said DC Galt, looking at Harvey.
Adam nodded, his eyes red from crying. ‘Where is Jessie now?’ he asked the police officer.
‘She has been sectioned, and she is sedated. She’s peaceful. I’ll get my colleague to take you to her now.’
‘Where is the baby? asked Harvey.
‘She’s in Accident and Emergency.’
‘I’ll go and be with Elizabeth, Adam. You go to Jessie. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.’
‘Thank you, Harvey,’ said Adam, ‘for everything.’ A policeman followed Adam as Harvey began to walk at speed with DC Galt towards Accident and Emergency.
‘I haven’t been down there yet, but it might be better if you waited in the relatives’ room and I get you an update,’ said DC Galt as they passed through the busy waiting room.
‘No, I want to be with my granddaughter,’ said Harvey.
‘It could be distressing. There are going to be a lot of people working on her.’
‘I don’t care. She needs me. Does Rebecca know that Jessie is okay?’ said Harvey.
‘Yes, and we’ve contacted her about Cecilia. I believe she’s at the hospital and on her way up to see her now.’
Harvey nodded. He could hear the commotion going on at the far end of the room before they reached the end bay which held his granddaughter. A tall, blond man in jeans with his shirt rolled up to his elbows was addressing a team.
DC Galt introduced herself. ‘This is the baby’s grandfather, Mr Roberts. Is it okay for us to be here?’
‘Yes, but if you could stay back a little,’ said the doctor, before turning to address his team.
‘Okay, baby girl, born yesterday, taken from hospital by her mother. Mum is psychotic; she’s with the police now. Baby’s airway is clear, she’s tachypnoeic – respiratory rate is 80. We couldn’t get a BP but there’s a faint brachial pulse, slow, at 68. She’s unresponsive and her temp is down at 35.7. We couldn’t get venous access so she has an interosseous in the right proximal tibia; we’ve given her 100mils of saline.’
The group of medics started talking over one another, and as Harvey stood watching he could feel the sense of panic coming from the small group.
‘I can’t hear much breath sound in the left lung at all. There’s a lot of wheezing and creps. And I can’t hear much air entry in the right side.’
‘I can’t get a blood pressure. She’s completely shut down peripherally, her cap refil is more than three seconds.’
‘Pupils are sluggish, she’s not responding.’
Harvey moved closer and saw someone push a tiny needle into baby Elizabeth’s hand.
‘Is the paeds consultant on her way in, Polly?’ said the doctor to a young woman in scrubs.
‘No, Mark, I was going to wait and assess the baby.’ The woman knew from the look on his face that she had made a misjudgement.
‘He’s ten minutes away,’ said a junior doctor in scrubs. ‘I can call him now.’
‘Do it. Tell him there’s a very sick baby here. We may not have ten minutes.’ Harvey saw the panic in the doctor’s eyes as he worked out his options. ‘That should have been done already,’ he muttered to himself.
Harvey looked on helplessly, then turned to DC Galt as realization dawned. ‘Did you say that Rebecca was in the building?’
DC Galt frowned. Harvey had spent the entire day keeping Rebecca at arm’s length.
‘She’s a paediatrician. Should we get her here?’ said Harvey.
DC Galt stepped forward and put her hand on the doctor’s shoulder. ‘The baby’s grandmother works in paediatrics. She should be in the building, shall I try and get hold of her?’
Mark looked over at Harvey. ‘Rebecca Waterhouse?’ Mark asked. ‘I know of her through her daughter. Yes, that would definitely be a good idea. Can you get her here right now?’
DC Galt nodded and ran off down the corridor. As Harvey stood, helplessly, he realized that having kept Rebecca at a distance all day, he was now praying that she would be able to save their granddaughter’s life.
If it wasn’t for him, Rebecca would already be where she should be, next to him, saving Elizabeth. It wasn’t the night when Rebecca’s parents were killed, or her postnatal psychosis, or her career that had torn Rebecca and Jessie apart. It was him. Not only was he not helping, he was the problem – and always had been.
‘Can I help?’ Harvey knew it was Rebecca’s voice before he looked up and saw her face. She stood panting by the trolley which Elizabeth lay on, having hurried from where she had been.
‘Definitely,’ said the doctor, holding out his hand. ‘Mark Hathaway, A&E consultant. Our paeds consultant is ten minutes’ away and we don’t have any time to lose. I know you’re family, so it’s not ideal, but we don’t have any choice.’
‘Okay.’ Rebecca took off her coat and threw it on a chair. ‘Shall I run it?’
‘Please do.’
Harvey stood watching Rebecca get to work. Her blonde hair falling around her face, determination in her emerald eyes. He had loved her so much growing up. It had been his sole purpose to do everything he could to keep her close, where he could protect her – where they were once happy, at Seaview. But all those years he had fought who Rebecca was, punished her for wanting so desperately to do something special with her life, to spread her wings, something her mother had been unable to do. And now, in this moment in time, Rebecca had stepped up to try and save baby Elizabeth’s life. She was the one they were all relying on.
‘Okay. Have you got blood and peripheral access?’ Rebecca continued.
Harvey moved forward and stood at the foot of the bed saying nothing, watching the team work on Elizabeth’s tiny body, which was completely still, an oxygen mask over her little face. Polly, the junior doctor, looked over at Rebecca. ‘She’s got an interosseous in her right tibia hip and she’s had 100 mils of normal saline through it but I can’t get a line in.’
Rebecca leaned forward and looked at Polly trying to put a canula in the baby, near her tiny elbow. Harvey could see Polly was getting flustered. He looked down at Elizabeth’s lifeless body and up again at Rebecca. While all the doctors rushed around, Rebecca was watching Elizabeth intensely, as if trying to figure out a puzzle.
‘Mark, please tell me what you’re doing. Talk me through the ACB – what’s the airway like?’
‘Seems clear.’ The doctor pressed his stethoscope on to the baby’s chest. ‘There’s a lot of crackles on the left chest and wheezes all over the lung fields.’
‘Can we get a probe on her finger, we’re not picking up any SATS,’ said Rebecca, looking up at the monitor next to the bed where baby Elizabeth lay.
‘The probe isn’t picking up SATS peripherally,’ added Polly, looking at Rebecca. ‘I’m trying to get bloods. There’s no veins now. There’s nothing because she’s shutting down,’ said the junior doctor.
‘Do a femoral stab then,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’m worried about her chest – the movement isn’t symmetrical. Can I have your tubes?’ She reached out for Polly’s stethoscope. ‘Quiet, please!’
Harvey watched as Rebecca listened to the baby’s chest. ‘She’s breathing, but she’s very tachypnoeic – she’s struggling. There’s not much movement on the right side of the chest. And no air entry on the left. She’s got a pneumothorax, she needs a drain.’
‘But there’s no signs of trauma,’ said Mark.
‘Look at the chest wall – it’s not moving,’ said Rebecca. ‘Trauma’s not the only cause of a pneumothorax, it’s a neonate with pneumonia – and her chest is not moving. This baby needs a drain in the right lung. I’ll do it. Get me some gloves and a chest drain now!’
‘Her he
art rate has just dropped through the floor,’ said Mark. ‘We need to start chest compressions.’
‘We need to intubate her,’ said Rebecca. ‘Where’s the paeds anaesthetist?’
‘On his way,’ said Mark.
‘Hold the airways open.’ Rebecca started to feed a thin tube down the baby’s throat. ‘We need a chest X-ray now!’ The monitor let out a long, loud beeping sound.
‘She’s crashing,’ said Mark.
‘Start the chest compressions,’ said Rebecca, moving back from the baby once the tube was in place.
Harvey stood watching as Mark started the compressions and Polly hurtled towards Rebecca with the equipment she had requested. Rebecca swiftly pulled a tiny needle from the packet and placed it against the baby’s skin.
‘Reduce the pressure of the compressions,’ she said to Mark. ‘Put an ECG on so I can see her heart rate.’
The room fell silent. Harvey held his breath and through the sea of bodies watched Rebecca’s fixed concentration: the fierce determination he’d witnessed so many times as they grew up together. Something flickered on the monitor and there was a high-pitched beep.
‘She’s back in sinus, she’s got a pulse, she’s got some colour back,’ said Mark.
Harvey realized he had been waiting until Elizabeth started breathing again before he allowed himself to. He watched the baby’s chest begin to move up and down.
‘We need to move her to ICU,’ said Rebecca. ‘Keep her intubated. We still need to do some work on her. Tell the paediatric consultant to meet us in ICU and I’ll do a handover.’
Mark nodded. ‘Thank you for stepping in,’ he said, turning to Rebecca, relief etched on his face. ‘It’s good to finally meet you, I’ve heard a great deal about you.’
‘You must be Mark,’ said Rebecca. ‘Iris mentioned you’d be here. Thank you for getting me.’
They began to walk away. ‘I don’t think Iris would ever have forgiven me if I’d lost her niece. Anyway, it wasn’t my idea to find you, I’m ashamed to say,’ said Mark, looking over at Harvey.
Harvey looked at Rebecca, his face white with relief. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said.
‘No problem,’ said Rebecca. ‘Let’s go.’
As Rebecca walked past Harvey she gripped his hand briefly. ‘She’ll be okay now,’ she said quietly.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Harriet
July 1952
Harriet Waterhouse stepped off the morning bus at the top of Seaview Lane and hurried as fast as her exhausted body would carry her towards the courtyard of Seaview Farm.
Before she even reached it the front door opened and Ted Roberts stood there, his wind-beaten skin pale, his tall frame wilting, the tinge of a morning shadow starting to emerge.
‘Where have you been, love?’ His words were warm but he looked tense, biting at his lip, black shadows under his eyes.
‘I’m so sorry, Ted, is everything okay? Was Rebecca upset when I didn’t come home last night?’
‘Not half as much as I was,’ said Ted, forcing a smile.
‘Where is she?’ Harriet rushed past him into the kitchen. She had only been gone twenty-four hours but the kitchen reflected how much had changed in that time. The room was littered with used pots and pans, the sink overflowed with plates, and children’s toys and chunks of mud and hay were scattered everywhere.
‘She’s fine. They’re playing in Harvey’s room. I should have been out at dawn – we’re doing the fence up at the ridge today. What happened? You said you’d be back by teatime at the latest.’
‘I had some business to take care of and it took longer than I expected.’ Harriet turned to face him, his whisky breath filling her nostrils.
‘What business? I was worried about you.’
‘I can’t tell you, Ted. It hurts me to say that, but I can’t. You’re just going to have to trust me. Go off to work and I’ll bring lunch up to you all just after midday.’
‘I have a right to know while you’re living and working at Seaview. Sam Connors said he saw you go into the police station.’
‘Please, Ted, let’s leave it. I’ve barely slept. I just want to see my little girl and get this place straightened out.’ She turned and called out to her daughter, leaving Ted, hands on hips, glaring at her.
Harriet walked through the house, calling out Rebecca’s name, but there was no reply. She started climbing the stairs, two by two. She began to feel panicked. Where was she? She needed to see her daughter, to hold her tight. For Rebecca to give her strength. ‘Rebecca! Come out now!’
Through the painful silence at last she heard the faint sound of giggling and found the two children, both of them a mass of blonde curls, hiding behind some curtains. She held out her arms for her daughter and the beautiful little girl fell into her. Harriet inhaled her – she smelled of spring.
‘Darling, I’ve missed you,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘Have you been playing outside this morning?’
Rebecca looked up at her and her eyes filled with tears. ‘We fed the lamb whose mummy died last night. She doesn’t have a mummy so we have to give her milk in a bottle.’
‘Oh, sweetheart, don’t cry. I’m sure she’ll be fine.’ Rebecca squeezed her daughter’s hands tight.
‘But who will put her to bed at night and read her a story?’
Harriet held her daughter’s face in her hands. ‘You can, my darling. Is she in the barn?’ She looked at Harvey, who nodded. ‘We’ll all keep her warm and fed and happy.’
‘But she’ll always know that we aren’t her mummy. She’ll miss her for ever.’ Rebecca let out a wail. Harriet could see she was exhausted. If Ted had been dealing with a fox attacking one of the ewes in the fields last night, then the children had probably put themselves to bed only when they passed out, around midnight, she guessed.
‘Shall we have a play at Seaview Cottage? And maybe you two can have a little nap? I can make the workers’ lunches there. I haven’t had a chance to wash and change yet today.’ She needed to get back to Seaview Cottage, to feel grounded, to think. She could clear up the farmhouse later. The two children nodded and after she grabbed the bread and cheese from the pantry they made their way through the cornfields and along the cliff path towards the cottage.
As the children skipped along ahead, Harriet felt a little nauseous. She could barely keep her eyes open, and the view brought to mind the night she had found Rebecca. She looked out into the bay and pictured herself, five years before, on the beach below, the wind howling. She could feel still the rain lashing at her face, the desperation to find Rebecca, and hear the faint sound of a baby’s cry.
She stopped and looked down the bay to the jagged cliff edge, to where she’d read in the newspaper that the woman’s body had washed up. The woman who was not Cecilia.
Cecilia was alive. It still seemed like a dream. She had washed up on the beach in Wittering Bay and been found by a stranger walking home from the pub. A stranger who had handed her over to Charles, who had consented to her being locked away until he decided to release her. Cecilia had lain in the freezing surf in the bay Harriet looked down on now, barely alive, as less than a mile away she and Ted gave her baby whisky by the fire, fighting to save her life.
The pain of what had been done to Cecilia stabbed her stomach and she bent over, retching up bile. Trying to gather herself, she took in deep breaths of sea air. She heard the scrunching of stones as Rebecca rushed to her.
‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’
‘I’m fine, darling, it’s just a bit of tummy ache. Let’s just get to the cottage.’ She needed to put pen to paper and get the night she had just been through out of her system.
‘Hold my hand, Mummy,’ said Rebecca, and together they walked towards the safety of the cottage.
After putting Harvey and Rebecca down for a nap, she walked over to her dressing table, pulled out the diary from the drawer and began trying to extract the sleepless night she had just endured from her mind.
Saturday, 26th July 1952
Dear Diary,
I discovered two days ago, on my visit to Greenways to see Jacob, that Cecilia did not drown, as I had convinced myself was the case – she is alive. She is locked up in a high-security wing at Greenways, because she is suicidal in the belief that she drowned her baby.
I cannot live with myself knowing this, that I may have played a part in the hell that has been bestowed on her because I found her child and raised her, thinking it was what Cecilia would have wanted – with the beliefs and passion for life that made me see the world differently.
So yesterday, armed with this new-found knowledge, I went to the police to tell them that Cecilia’s baby is alive. That I found her and raised her, believing that Cecilia was dead.
I left my child, who I love more than I thought it was possible to love a person, and went to turn myself in. Knowing that in all probability I would have Rebecca taken away from me and returned to Cecilia. And that I would never see my baby again.
On the long, painful bus journey to the police station in Chichester, I went over the facts again in my mind. Trying to decide if I had convinced myself that Cecilia was dead for my own purposes. Because I longed so desperately for a child.
But I have not slept, or rested for a moment, since I discovered the truth. And I know that if I even suspected, had been given any clue, I would have immediately done what I did yesterday.
What other conclusion was I supposed to have reached? Cecilia’s shoes lay by the water on the night I found baby Rebecca frozen and close to death. The sea was raging and the temperature icy. Not only this, but within months village gossip told me that Charles Northcote had remarried and I read in the newspaper of a woman’s body found washed up on the beach. Was it so wrong of me to reach this conclusion?
I torture myself that I didn’t try harder to find out for certain what had happened to her, but I would have found it nearly impossible. Charles has kept the baby’s existence a secret, since Cecilia ran away with her when she was five days old. And I have enabled him to keep that secret in the five years since, for fear of Rebecca being taken away and sent overseas for adoption. But at what cost to Cecilia?