Death Row

‘I don’t think I actually got to talk to anybody. I kind of remember the guys arriving.’ Delaney shrugged a little sheepishly. ‘I seem to remember taking a swing – it might have been in slow motion. The next thing I remember is you shaking me awake with all the tenderness of a Waterford washerwoman shaking out her laundry.’

Kate wasn’t amused. ‘I’ll give you tender. And why didn’t you come home after you went round there? Why go to King’s Cross, of all places?’

Jack held his head again, covering it. ‘I just needed a drink.’

‘We’ve got drink, Jack. Plenty of it.’

‘I know.’

‘So why, then?’

Delaney sighed. ‘It very nearly could have been me, you know.’

‘Could have been you that what?’

‘That smashed that man’s smug face in. Good Lord, I’ve wanted to do it often enough before now but last night he gave me the perfect temptation.’

‘I know. He hit Wendy. You’re an unreconstructed male, we all know that about you, Jack. But the point is that you didn’t do it.’

‘It’s not just that. Not just because he slapped her.’

‘What, then?’

‘It could have been, though.’ Delaney found his hand forming involuntarily into a fist again. ‘I swear to God, darling, last night I was this close to smashing my fist into his face and keeping on doing it.’

‘I know.’

Delaney looked up at her. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He slept with her.’

‘Who?’

‘With my wife, Kate. He told me he’d slept with Sinead.’

‘Oh my God.’ Kate sat back, thoughts suddenly swirling though her mind as she remembered guiltily.

She shouldn’t do it, but, as she sat at her friend’s computer terminal she couldn’t help herself. She typed in the access code that Jane Harrington had, under duress, given her, and typed in DELANEY to pull up his hospital records. She knew enough not to trust anything the staff at the hospital had told her. She wasn’t a relative. In truth, she didn’t even know what she was. Girlfriend didn’t sound at all right. Partner was a bit formal for what they had. Mother of his child, she decided, that was what she was, and that gave her rights.

The first hit came up with Siobhan Delaney.

Not the right to look at confidential medical records, maybe, but the man she loved was recovering from an operation and she wanted to know how bad the damage was. She justified it to herself: she had every right.

Not the right to read his ex-wife’s records, mind, she said to herself again, arguing against what she knew she was going to do. Kate found herself unable to click the screen away and carried on reading it instead. That night had defined Delaney, after all, for the last four years. It had certainly defined their relationship, if such it was. And so, moral qualms delayed if not avoided, Kate read the report.

Everything was much as she knew it to be. His pregnant wife, suffering heavy blood loss, was rushed into theatre. They had performed an emergency C-section. The baby, and subsequently the mother, had both died. The procedures seemed in order, everything apart from the outcome was in order.

Apart from one thing.

Kate read the document again and wished she never had.

Days later, as she held Jack Delaney’s hand and looked down at the gravestones of his wife and son, she realised that she would never tell Jack the terrible truth that she had learned about the boy. That when the baby had been born it had needed blood; the surgical team had checked automatically but Jack Delaney was not a match.

He wasn’t a match because he hadn’t been the father.

*

Kate blinked her eyes, realising that Jack was still talking to her. ‘He told me that the baby she was carrying when she died wasn’t mine, Kate. He told me it was his.’

Kate could feel a flush rising from her neck, burning her cheeks, felt Jack’s stare upon her as the realisation struck him.

‘You knew this, didn’t you?’ he asked, taken aback.

‘Not all of it. I knew about the baby …’

‘How?’

‘When you were shot, Jack. I looked at your records.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She almost couldn’t bear to look at the disappointment in his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have known, Jack. I’m sorry. Would it have helped you if I had told you?’