“Jesus Christ,” Tom whispered.
“We found out later that she had made suicide attempts before, had been diagnosed with bipolar long before she met your father. I didn’t know what to do,” Rose cried. “I was in shock. I just took the baby, took her from her pram, and put her in the pushchair with Emily and then I ran. I thought people would say I pushed her, or that I made her jump, or that I had driven her to it, that when it all came out about your father and her, it would look like I’d engineered the whole thing. I wasn’t thinking straight—I panicked. I just ran. I didn’t know what else to do!”
For a long moment after she had finished speaking, Rose and Tom stood silently in the center of the room, while Oliver sat, his head in his hands. Beyond the window, clouds moved in front of the moon, the endless empty fields stretching on beneath it cast suddenly into darkness.
TWENTY-SIX
SUFFOLK, 1981
I didn’t notice the baby, not straightaway. Rose and Oliver both looked so awful, were in such a state, that it took me a few moments before I saw the tiny creature wrapped in a blanket in Rose’s arms. And it’s funny, but I realized immediately then: before they even had to say anything, I had already guessed whose she was. “Oh, Rose . . . ,” I said.
“Beth, we need your help,” she replied.
It was at that moment that Doug came into the hall. “What’s going on?” he asked, taking in the sight of the four of them.
But Rose didn’t shift her eyes from mine. “There’s been an accident, Beth,” she said, her voice low and strained. “There’s been a terrible accident and you have to help us.”
Once we were all seated in our living room, you could have heard a pin drop as Rose began to tell us what had happened. When she got to the part where Nadia jumped, I gasped, and Doug got to his feet. “And you didn’t call the coastguards, the police?” he asked, incredulously. “What the hell were you thinking? You just ran? You took the baby and ran?” He turned first to Oliver and then to me. “For God’s sake, we need to tell someone!”
Rose stared at him, her face still drained of color, her eyes wide and bright. In her arms the baby began to stir.
“Doug,” I said firmly, “sit down,” and he was so surprised that he did what I asked. I went to Rose and gently lifted the child from her arms. God, she was tiny. She was so, so tiny. I suppose my nurse’s instincts kicked in, because I suddenly felt very calm. “Do you have formula and nappies for her?” I asked. When Rose didn’t reply, only gazed at me blankly, I had to go to her and take hold of her shoulder while I said it again, loudly and slowly. I noticed that she was trembling quite violently.
At last she nodded. “Yes, yes, I—they’re in the bag beneath Emily’s pushchair. We stopped on the way. There was some milk still left in the bottle that she had with her. I think . . . I think maybe it’s breast milk.” She clamped a hand to her mouth. “Oh God,” she cried. “Oh God!”
“Okay,” I said. “Good.” When I’d got the bag, I turned to Doug, handing him a bottle and a tin of Cow & Gate. “Just follow the instructions on the side.”
It was then that Oliver spoke for the first time. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I mean, please, if I may?” He looked so meek and uncertain, so very different from the dashing, charming man I’d met that day in the supermarket. In fact, at that moment he looked more like a cowed, frightened . . . well, wimp is the only word I can think of, to be honest. I felt a sharp, cold flash of disdain. I looked away and nodded, and he followed Doug into the kitchen.
Rose began to cry again. “That poor woman,” she said. “Oh, Beth, that poor, poor woman.”
And it’s funny, because there I was, a baby in my arms, Rose’s desperate, frightened eyes staring back at me, the knowledge that a woman had died that night, and yet I felt completely calm. Here they were, these big important people, so clever, so successful compared to me, sitting in my living room, miserable and terrified and wanting me to make it all better for them. I held her to me, little Lana, as she was called then, and knew what Rose was going to ask me to do.
When Oliver came back in with the bottle of milk, he hesitated, then passed it to me. “Would you like to do it?” I asked him. I raised the baby slightly, offering her to him, and I saw his eyes dart to Rose, saw her briefly shake her head, and, deflated, he dropped his gaze and turned away. I will remember forever the disgust I felt for that man right then. I had thought that he and Rose were so admirable, people to look up to. I realized in that moment how very wrong I’d been.
I turned to Rose. “What are you asking us to do?”
To her credit, she didn’t bother beating around the bush. “You want a child,” she said bluntly. “You want a baby. I can arrange everything, all the hospital paperwork, so you can get a birth certificate saying she is yours.”
Only Doug was surprised. He looked from one to the other of us in confusion before the penny dropped. “Are you completely out of your minds?” he said.
