by T J Stimson
When Lucas spoke again, he sounded wary. ‘Maddie, what are you trying to say?’
‘I wished he hadn’t been born,’ she said bleakly. ‘I wished he wasn’t here. Sometimes … sometimes I even prayed he’d just disappear. That someone would just … take him.’
‘Maddie—’
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ she cried wildly. ‘I wanted someone to take my baby! What kind of mother would fantasise about something like that?’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Lucas said again, but his voice sounded less certain.
He sat next to her and put his arm around her, and she leaned into the familiar bulwark of his shoulder, but it no longer seemed comforting or safe. He was like an oak that had been hollowed out, as vulnerable as she to the coming storm.
Chapter 10
Saturday 10.00 a.m.
The door opened. One of the doctors who’d met them from the ambulance came into the room, followed by a middle-aged woman wearing round gold spectacles and a painfully sympathetic expression.
‘Mr and Mrs Drummond, first let me offer you my deepest condolences,’ the doctor began, pulling up a hard plastic chair opposite the sofa and placing a file on the coffee table. ‘I am so very sorry for your loss. I can’t begin to imagine how you must be feeling.’
Maddie stared at him blankly.
‘My name is Leonard Harris, and I’m the duty doctor at A&E today. This is Jessica Towner,’ he added, as the older woman took another chair beside him. ‘She’s our family liaison and bereavement counsellor. She’s here to help you through the process and explain everything that will happen next.’
‘I’m also very sorry for your loss,’ the woman murmured, her voice a respectful whisper. Maddie had to strain to hear her. ‘I’m here to help you in any way I can. I know what a distressing time this is, so if there’s anything I can do to make things a little easier, please ask.’
The doctor leaned forward, his clasped hands dangling between his knees. ‘I know you must be in a state of shock right now,’ he said, ‘but there are a few questions I have to ask. There are certain procedures we have to go through, and a few decisions you need to make, which Jessica will discuss with you in a moment. If we can sort some of these things out now, you’ll be able to go back to your family and grieve without any more interference.’ He waited a moment for this to sink in, and then reached for his file. ‘We just need to check a few facts first. Your son’s name is Noah Michael Drummond, correct?’
‘Michael was after my father,’ Maddie said automatically. It was suddenly important they understood her son wasn’t just another statistic, a name on their forms. He would never have a chance now to show the world who he was. She had to speak for him. ‘We both liked the name Noah. We wanted something old-fashioned.’
‘And he was born on the third of February this year?’
Lucas nodded.
‘There were no problems with the pregnancy or birth? No complications during labour or delivery?’
‘No, none.’
The doctor ran through a series of routine questions about Noah’s birth and the first few weeks of his short life. Maddie tuned him out, letting Lucas answer all of them. She found herself unable to concentrate on what the doctor was saying. The questions were pointless anyway. Apart from colic, Noah had never had a single thing wrong with him, not even a cold. Her pregnancy had been ridiculously easy, and Noah had had a normal birth, her labour taking less than four hours from her waters breaking to his delivery. She hadn’t even needed an epidural. She was good at having babies. Shelled them like peas, her mother said.
‘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.’