Close My Eyes

  I walk to the window and peer out. There’s no sign of Lucy on the street. Where had she said she was going? Sam’s Deli – the café at the top of the road. I glance at the clock on Art’s desk. 10.15.

  I try to focus on what she said . . . that her sister was one of the nurses present when Beth was delivered. That the doctor only pretended Beth was dead.

  It’s insane. Inconceivable. I might not remember the nurse, but I certainly recall Dr Rodriguez, the god of an obstetrician I was assigned at the Fair Angel. He was tanned and handsome and oozing calm bedside manner – there’s no way he would have done anything unprofessional, let alone lie about our baby and take her away from us.

  I lean my head against the cold glass of the window pane. It’s been so long since I’ve let myself relive the time leading up to the C-section. Art and I spent the last month of my pregnancy at a rented house just outside Oxford. We went there to be close to Fair Angel, which I chose, like so many before me, because of its amazing natural-birth pod – a unit which I never, of course, got to experience. In the end, my thirty-seven-week scan showed Beth was dead and I had a C-section under general anaesthetic straightaway. At the time I thought that Dr Rodriguez agreed to move so fast out of compassion. Could that decision really have been part of a plan to take Beth away from me?

  I look out over the roofs and chimneys of our Victorian neighbourhood. Back in Oxford, our rented house near the Fair Angel hospital was the perfect place to be heavily, dreamily pregnant. It overlooked the river Cherwell: beautiful and peaceful, with a small wood in the grounds and a long stone path leading down to the water’s edge. Being there suited my mood. I’d slowed right down by that last month and drifted through my days, all the exhaustion and sickness of the first trimester long behind me.

  Art worked the whole way through our time there, although, to be fair, he only disappeared off to London a couple of times each week. We had a few visitors: my mum came, as did some of our friends. Art’s sister, Morgan, visited twice, on whirlwind stopovers as she jet-setted between her main home in Edinburgh and her offices in New York and Geneva. Even though her visits were short, she was incredibly thoughtful, organizing a driver to take me to the birthing centre for check-ups; a daily supply of the fresh, organic grapes that I craved throughout the last three months; and sending a steady stream of flowers plus a hugely expensive cut-glass vase to put them in. During our time in Oxford I saw Dr Rodriguez every few days and never once did he make me feel uncomfortable or suspicious that he had anything other than my best interests at heart.

  The rumble of the rubbish-collection truck outside stirs me from my memories. I watch the truck stop and the men inside get out and stride over to my neighbour’s wheelie bin. I give myself a shake. Nothing that Lucy O’Donnell has told me can possibly be true. It’s just some cruel trick.

  I go back downstairs, find my mobile and call Hen. Crazy and flaky, but fiercely loyal, she’s been my best friend since sixth form. We used to introduce ourselves together, grinning, like a double act: Gen and Hen.

  She answers on the second ring.

  ‘Hey, how are you?’

  I hesitate. Now that I’m faced with communicating what Lucy O’Donnell has told me, it sounds almost too ludicrous to say out loud. I must be mad even to have considered it might be true.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this.’ I plunge right in. ‘A woman just turned up on my doorstep and told me Beth is still alive.’

  ‘What? No way.’ Hen gasps. I can hear the outrage in her voice and instantly feel better.

  I explain exactly what O’Donnell said.

  ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe anyone would do that.’

  ‘She is just some nutter, isn’t she?’ As I speak I realize how much I’m looking to Hen to reassure me.

  ‘Or worse,’ Hen says darkly. ‘Sounds like she could be just trying to get you out of the house for a few minutes or something.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Probably so she – or whoever she’s working with – can sneak into the house to burgle it while it’s empty.’

  I think of the plump, anxious woman who stood on my doorstep.

  ‘I don’t think that’s it,’ I say uncertainly.

  ‘Then what the hell is she playing at?’ Hen’s voice rises. ‘Why would anyone make up such a terrible story? Why would anyone want to hurt you like that?’

  ‘You don’t think I should go down the road and . . . and find out more?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Gen, no way.’ I can just picture Hen’s expression as she speaks, her pale eyes wide with shock, her frizzy hair wild around her face. ‘Don’t give the mad cow the satisfaction of thinking she’s got to you.’

  I’m chewing at the skin around my fingernail. I tear a tiny strip of skin away with my teeth.

  Hen’s son, Nathan, is yelling in the background, ‘Mum! Mum!’

  ‘Sorry, Gen.’ Hen sucks in her breath. ‘I’m gonna have to go. Nat’s off school with a cold. Hey, d’you want me to bring anything for Art’s party on Friday?’

  Oh, shit. I take my finger away from my mouth. That’s what I was going to do today: Art’s fortieth was last weekend, but the party is planned for the end of the week. I was going to make a shopping list.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Just bring yourself and Rob.’ Nathan’s shouts rise in volume. ‘Speak later.’

  I put down my phone. Talking to Hen hasn’t helped as much as I hoped it would. I don’t believe Lucy O’Donnell was trying to lure me out of my house. She wanted to come in.

  With a jolt, it strikes me: maybe she really believes Dr Rodriguez did steal Beth away from us.

  I wander from room to room. The house feels oppressively silent. I check the time again. It’s almost 10.30. Art will still be in his meeting. I want to tell him what’s happened. I want him to tell me that Lucy O’Donnell is wrong. A con artist, like Hen said.

  But they didn’t see her; the nervous look in her eye, the trembling hands, the attempt to look smart in her cheap suit with the sweat patches under the armpits.

  I’m certain she believed what she said.

  I sit on the bottom step of the stairs, my head in my hands. A minute passes. Then another. Soon it will be eleven o’clock. Soon my opportunity to find out what O’Donnell was talking about will be over. I’m almost completely certain she’s wrong, but that tiny sliver of doubt fractures inside me, shooting poison through every vein.

  I stand up. I fetch my keys and my purse. I don’t have a choice. I have to find out what she believes. And why.

  Sam’s Deli is one of my favourite local shops. It always smells of cheese and smoked meats, while its dark wooden shelves groan with pickles and preserves. I walk through the deli section, past a shelf of chilli jam and pickled okra and into the café at the back.

  Lucy O’Donnell is sitting at a small round table well apart from the only other people in the room – a gaggle of mums and toddlers by the far wall. A cup of white coffee stands in front of her. It looks cold and untouched. She looks up and sees me watching her. She blinks rapidly as I walk over. The floor is bare, the tables and chairs are wooden and functional. Pictures of Italian-American film stars are dotted around the walls. I sit down under Al Pacino and fold my hands in my lap. My heart is racing and my throat feels so dry I’m not sure I can speak.

  Lucy reaches across the table and touches my arm. I pull back.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asks, as a waiter walks over.

  ‘Just water, thanks,’ I croak.

  The waiter leaves and I look at Lucy. Her eyes are still full of embarrassment and fear.

  ‘Mrs Loxley . . .’ She coughs. ‘Thank you for coming. I’m sorry I didn’t explain properly before. Let me start again.’ Lucy heaves her fake-leather handbag onto the table between us and rummages inside it for a second. She pulls out a photo of herself and another middle-aged black woman, both smiling at the camera. The second woman is wearing a nurse’s uniform. ‘That’s my sister, Mary,’ Lucy says, hand
ing me the picture. ‘She attended the birth of your baby eight years ago . . . Eight years ago this June.’

  I stare at the photo. The second woman is vaguely familiar, but I can’t place her for certain. The time just before the emergency C-section is such a blur. I’d met Dr Rodriguez many times, of course. But my normal midwife was on holiday when I had the operation and I only met the theatre team as I was being prepared for the anaesthetic. There were five or six people at least, but I was in such a daze I don’t remember any of them properly.

  Lucy’s brow creases with concern. ‘Don’t you recognize her?’

  For a second I wonder if the woman is simply insane.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I say. My voice is hoarse. Barely a whisper.

  ‘But she was with you at the Fair Angel when you had your baby.’

  I stare again at the photograph, trying to remember.

  One of the theatre nurses was a black woman. I remember her holding my hand as the anaesthetist put me under for the emergency caesarean. I can’t recall her face clearly, though, and certainly not her name.

  ‘I can’t be sure this is her,’ I say, handing back the photograph.

  Lucy takes it and tucks it absently into her coat pocket. She gives that nervous little cough again. ‘Mary was there. The doctor – Dr Rodriguez – he hired her from an agency . . . he paid for her to travel from Birmingham, where we live . . .’

  The waiter returns and places my glass of water on the table. A tiny drop splashes onto the wood.

  ‘But there were a lot of other people in the operating theatre,’ I insist. ‘Are you seriously saying they all witnessed a baby being born alive then pretended it was dead?’

  ‘Just the anaesthetist, and Mary,’ Lucy says. ‘Dr Rodriguez got the junior doctor and the other nurses out of the room before the baby was born.’

  ‘How?’ I shake my head. It all sounds ridiculously far-fetched.

  Lucy shrugs. ‘I’m not sure . . . Mary was so ill when she told me . . . but I think he might have given them something . . . made it look like food poisoning.’

  What? I stare at her, my mind in overdrive. What she is describing would have taken such elaborate planning. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just know that Dr Rodriguez took your baby to give to someone else,’ Lucy goes on. Her voice is low, but filled with emotion. ‘Mary saw, because she helped Dr Rodriguez with the delivery. The doctor paid her ten years’ wages for that one birth. The only condition was that she keep quiet.’

  My head feels like a million tiny bombs are exploding inside it. Could Dr Rodriguez really have pretended Beth had died, then paid his staff to keep quiet about it? My mind shrieks that these are lies and yet, as I look into Lucy O’Donnell’s eyes, my instinct tells me she is sincere.

  I try to focus, to force myself to form a coherent question, a challenge . . .

  What about Beth’s chromosomal abnormality? What about the fact that I saw a picture of our poor dead baby, and Art saw her in the flesh? What about the fact that reputable doctors don’t risk being struck off to steal babies from healthy, wealthy women?

  The question I ask, however, is not any of these.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ My voice is shaking. My whole body is trembling, whether with shock or anger I don’t know. I fix my gaze on Lucy’s anxious, worn face. ‘Why now?’

  ‘I only just found out,’ Lucy says. Her eyes fill with tears as she speaks. ‘My sister . . . Mary . . . she passed away just last month. Cancer. Cancer of the colon. Caught late, it took her fast, but just before she . . . before the end, she told me what happened . . . what really happened.’ She pauses. I stare at her intently.

  ‘And?’ I say.

  ‘Mary and I were brought up Catholic,’ Lucy goes on, her voice falling to a whisper. ‘Mary said she knew what she’d done was wrong and she couldn’t go to her grave with such a wicked sin on her conscience. I don’t see why she’d lie to me, and what she told me made sense of so much . . . you know, where the money came for her and Ronnie to pay for their new place and . . . and . . . that’s what she told me, Mrs Loxley, just that. “Her baby was born alive.” Those were her exact words. She said: “I feel so bad, Lucy, so bad for that poor lady because they took her baby away and told her the little thing was dead.”’

  My heart is thumping so hard the whole café must be able to hear it. It can’t be true. And yet I want it to be true. I want and I don’t want . . .

  ‘So if . . . if you’re right . . .’ It’s an effort to form the words, to speak them. ‘If what you’re saying is really true, then where is . . . where’s my . . . my baby now?’

  Lucy’s face creases with sympathy. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry but I don’t know any more than what I just told you. Mary was close to the end when she told me. She didn’t say much after but, to be honest with you, I don’t think she knew anything else about your baby.’

  ‘But . . .?’ I stop, trying to work out what I’m asking. ‘Why would Dr Rodriguez steal my baby away from me? It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, if someone else wanted a baby, and they couldn’t have their own, why not adopt or use a surrogate? Why not steal a baby from someone very poor or very young, with no resources?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Lucy offers me a hopeless shrug. ‘Mary said there was just her and the doctor and the anaesthetist in the know, that the doctor handed her the baby while he sewed you up.’

  My mouth is dry. I take a sip of my water.

  ‘So you’re saying the anaesthetist knew about this as well?’ I try to remember what he looked like, but all I can picture is a pair of bushy eyebrows above a surgical mask. ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t.’

  I shake my head. ‘Okay . . .’ I hesitate, trying to marshal my thoughts, to get the words right. ‘Okay, I understand why your sister told you, but why are you here, telling me this?’

  Lucy’s cheeks redden. ‘Well, I didn’t want it on my conscience any more than Mary wanted it on hers and . . . and then . . . Bernard . . . that’s my husband . . . he’s recently out of work and well, anyway . . . it just seemed like the right thing to do.’ She stops and looks away.

  My heart sinks. So Bernard has lost his job. Of course. That’s what this is about: money.

  ‘Was it a good job?’ I ask, lightly.

  ‘Yes, well, it was a regular salary. Bernard worked for a construction company, but he’s getting older and they’re always looking for ways of getting rid of the union guys before they get too close to their pensions.’ She shakes her head, lost for the moment in her own problems. ‘When Bernard came home and told me, it was too much on top of knowing how sick poor Mary was getting, but then, after she died and I told him what she told me about your baby he said that it wasn’t a coincidence, that the Lord had taken Mary so that she would tell us about your baby. And he went on the internet and found out all your details – about how you’d called the baby Beth and you being a writer and your husband appearing on that TV show.’

  Lucy picks up her cup of coffee. It suddenly all clicks into place. She’s only here because of Art’s involvement in The Trials. The series – a reality TV show that’s a cross between Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice – was shown over four weeks earlier in the year; Art was one of the three panellists. It’s not like the show has made him a household name. And – apart from once or twice during the weeks when the show was broadcast – he hasn’t been recognized in the street either. But in business circles, Art’s reputation has definitely been enhanced. And he’s developed a small but devoted fan-base of female admirers too. Any internet search on Art would quickly reveal he is successful and wealthy – just as any attempt to find out about me online would identify me firstly as his wife and mother of his stillborn baby girl and, secondly, as a writer, albeit one who hasn’t published a book in eight years.

  Lucy puts down her cup. It rattles in the saucer. ‘So it was easy to find you, Mrs Loxley. And . . . oh, goo
dness, Bernard and I knew this would be a shock for you but we hoped that in coming here . . .’

  ‘We?’ I look around. The only man in the café is the young waiter. ‘Is Bernard here too?’

  ‘He’s outside in our hire car, waiting for me.’ Lucy looks embarrassed. She pushes across the table a scrap of paper on which a mobile phone number is neatly printed. ‘We didn’t want to overwhelm you. Here’s my number for when you’ve had a chance to think about what I’ve said.’

  The reality of the situation settles inside me as I pick up the piece of paper and shove it into my coat pocket. A couple with vague connections to the hospital in which I lost my baby have seen an opportunity to make money out of my grief by selling me false information. The cruelty of it almost blinds me and, now that the terrible hope is dashed, I realize just how huge a part of me craved that Beth was, truly, alive.

  This hope, of course, is the very emotion that Lucy and Bernard have been counting on. In seconds, my hurt turns to humiliation and my humiliation to rage.

  ‘So how much do you want?’ I snap.

  Lucy looks shocked. ‘That isn’t what we . . . it’s not like that . . .’

  Christ, they’re not even good extortionists.

  ‘So do you have anything else to sell apart from your sister’s deathbed confession?’

  Lucy frowns. ‘I don’t understand.’

  I lean forward, spitting out the words. ‘Do you have anything else to tell me?’ I say, not expecting an answer.

  She frowns, then bites her lip. Hesitating.

  So she has held something back, some other bargaining chip. I steel myself. ‘You want the money first? Is that it?’ I’m seething now, my fists clenched, barely able to contain the fury that roils inside me.

  ‘No, Mrs Loxley, it’s just this last thing is hard to tell you . . .’ she tails off.