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Dr Gill tried to side-step her once again, but she went with him. He sighed in frustration.
Harper spoke quickly. ‘This won’t take long,’ she assured him, ‘no need to worry. A patient, Mrs Tranter, called 999 this morning. Is there anything you can tell me about that?’
‘Yes,’ said Dr Gill, apparently pleased to be able to provide a speedy answer, ‘it was a medical emergency, not a police matter. I had hoped someone would contact you about it.’
‘They did, but I wasn’t quite clear about the circumstances.’
‘Well, that’s standard, you wouldn’t be. It’s confidential. All I can tell you is that the patient in question, when she called you, was experiencing problems relating to a temporary impairment of her mental health.’
‘So, nothing to do with an intruder?’
A flicker of incredulity crossed the face of Dr Gill, before the curtain of professionalism dropped down. Very tired indeed.
‘In my field, officer, patients often see things that are not there. And a lot of the time they call the police about it, believing what they see to be real. I’m surprised you haven’t come across it before.’
Harper gave the child-doctor a long look. She wondered how old she would have to be for him not to talk down to her. But then, maybe that was it. Maybe she was already so old at thirty-nine that he saw her as a geriatric, losing the plot.
‘Can I talk to her?’
As he shrugged a don’t-see-why-not, something vibrated in Dr Gill’s pocket and he pulled out a small device, checking its screen. ‘Look, I’ve really got to go. You go ahead though, officer. On the left, by the window. She’s a bit sleepy because we gave her a mild tranquilliser to calm her down. But she’ll talk to you. I’m sure you’ll find there’s nothing to worry the police with.’
As Dr Gill strode away, Harper flipped open her notebook and wrote the words: Dr Gill: sceptic. 8.07 a.m. Royal Infirmary Hospital.
In some areas of the police service they had devices with note-taking apps, but nothing could beat a paper notebook. It meant that Harper could burn her notes if she needed to. The fact you could no longer erase things properly from computers or phones meant her job was easier in a way and harder in another, depending on which side of the fence one stood and whether or not one had anything to hide. She herself didn’t usually have things to hide, of course. But it was nice to have the option.
The bay had four cubicles, but only two had beds in them. In cubicle A there was a red-haired woman, her baby’s hair even brighter than her own. Diagonally across, by the window, the woman in cubicle C sat in bed holding two sleeping infants, one in the crook of each arm. Brown hair, very curly, long enough to cloud around her shoulders. Late twenties, light brown skin, silver wedding band. Harper couldn’t tell height and weight with any accuracy while Mrs Tranter was sitting but she seemed average, perhaps a tad taller than average. Her face was slack, motionless. The babies were paler in complexion than their mother, and both had wisps of curly blond hair. One was dressed in a green sleep suit and the other in yellow.
There was a spot of blood seeping through a bandage on Mrs Tranter’s left wrist. She was dressed in a hospital gown. On the floor between the bed and the wall there was an open suitcase spilling its contents – baby clothes, nappies and what were presumably Mrs Tranter’s own clothes. She’d dressed the babies, but not herself.
Something about her face reminded Harper of a photograph she had of her own mother as a young woman; the large brown eyes rimmed with sadness, gazing softly into the distance, unreachable. Harper was gentle when she spoke.
‘Lauren Tranter?’
The woman turned her head towards Harper’s voice. As the seconds slipped by, she gradually came to focus. It seemed a gargantuan effort. Lazily, her eyelids dropped shut and opened again, the slow blink of the drugged.
‘Yes.’
‘My name’s Jo Harper. I’m a police officer. I’m here to talk to you about last night.’
‘Oh.’
Lauren’s gaze drifted down towards the baby in yellow, and then across to the other. They were identical.
She said, ‘I thought they called you. I thought they told you not to come.’
‘They did,’ Harper smiled, gave a little shrug, ‘but I came anyway. It’s my duty to investigate when there’s been a report of a serious incident. You called 999 at half past four this morning, or thereabouts? The report mentioned an attempted child abduction.’
Mrs Lauren Tranter’s face crumpled. Tears cleaned a path to her chin. ‘I did call.’
Harper waited for her to go on. A machine was beeping in the next bay. The sound of footsteps in the hallway, a door banging.
Awkwardly, Lauren wiped her nose with the back of a hand, getting a bit of wet on the yellow-dressed baby’s arm. ‘But they said it wasn’t real. It didn’t happen. They said I imagined it. I’m so sorry.’
‘It must have been very frightening for you,’ said Harper.
‘Terrifying.’ The word out came out on a sigh. Lauren searched Harper’s face, looking for an answer to some unasked question.
‘You were right to call.’ Harper laid a hand on the younger woman’s arm, not making contact with any part of the baby she held there, but the mother flinched at the touch and the sudden movement shocked the baby, whose eyes flew open, its arms and legs briefly rigid before they slowly drew in again as Harper watched. The baby in green on the other side rubbed the back of its head on its mother’s arm, side to side, yawning and rolling its tongue into a tube. The little eyes remained closed.
‘Sorry,’ said Lauren, ‘I’m a bit jumpy.’
‘Don’t worry. You’ve been through a lot, I get it.’
‘I’m really tired. I didn’t get much sleep, not last night, not since I had them. I’m not complaining though. It’s worth it, right?’
‘Right,’ said Harper, ‘they’re beautiful. When were they born?’
‘Saturday night.’ She nodded to the one in yellow. ‘Morgan was born at 8.17. His little brother came out at 8.21. He’s called Riley.’
‘Lovely,’ said Harper. She scrabbled for a platitude to fill the silence. ‘Well, you’ve certainly got your hands full there.’
Lauren turned her eyes on Harper. ‘Do you have children?’ she asked.
Harper didn’t know why she didn’t answer immediately. All her life she’d been answering immediately, giving the same almost stock response, No, not me, I’m not the maternal type, said in a way that made it clear she didn’t want any more questions. Today was different somehow; Lauren wasn’t making small talk. She wasn’t implying, like some people did, that Harper’s biological clock was all but ticked out. She was asking Do you understand what just happened to me? Standing there in front of Lauren Tranter, so devoid of artifice, not just hoping but needing the answer to be Yes, yes I do, the truth was on her tongue. But she swallowed it.
‘No, not really,’ she said, immediately hearing how stupid that sounded. Not really? What did that mean? Lauren made a small frown but didn’t say anything more. Harper went on, ‘I’ve got a little sister. A lot younger than me. So I guess I sometimes think of her as my kid. But no, I don’t have any children of my own.’
Lauren’s eyebrows went up and she seemed to drift away, unfocussed. Newly etched lines mapped the contours under her eyes, the topography of her recent trauma.
After a moment Harper said, ‘What happened to your wrist?’
The spot of blood on the bandage had grown from the size of a pea to the size of a penny in the time Harper had been standing there.
‘Well, she, the woman, she . . .’ Lauren seemed confused. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did someone hurt you?’
Lauren turned her head towards the window. Across the car park people were shuffling in and out of the big glass doors, needlessly high doors that dwarfed the people below. The doors were opening, shutting, opening, shutting, reflecting the morning sun as they met and flashing, leaving orange spots in Harper’s eyes. Lauren kept her eyes wide open into the blinding light.
‘That man, Dr Gill. He said I did it to myself.’
‘And what do you think, Mrs Tranter?’
‘I think . . . ’ She looked down at the babies and up at the detective sergeant. Big, sad, frightened eyes, streaming tears. ‘I don’t think I can trust what I think right now.’
Chapter 7
A beam of the slant west sunshine
Made the wan face almost fair
Lit the blue eyes’ patient wonder
And the rings of pale gold hair
She kissed it on lip and forehead
She kissed it on cheek and chink
And she bared her snow-white bosom
To the lips so pale and thin
FROM The Changeling
BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Ten o’clock, visiting time. From her hospital bed Lauren observed a column of fuzzy colours approaching her and tried to focus. The fuzz resolved into the familiar shape of Patrick. It felt like years had passed since she’d last seen him.
‘My God,’ said Patrick, ‘what have they done to you?’
‘It’s fine, everything’s fine,’ said Lauren, but all that came out were broken sobs, the incoherent hupping yowls of an injured creature. Soon it subsided, trickled to whimpers. He stroked her hair.
‘Shh, lovely,’ said Patrick, keeping his voice low. On the other side of the bay, a jubilant party of assorted family was gathering around Mrs Gooch’s bed. Chairs were pulled across for older Gooches. Two smallish ginger children each possessively gripped ribbons attached to shiny silver balloons that trailed near the ceiling, announcing in bubblegum-pink lettering: It’s a Girl! One of the balloon-bearers stared slack-jawed at Lauren so that the lolly dangling from his open mouth nearly fell out.
‘Shh. I know,’ said Patrick, unaware of the gaping child at his back.
Another version of Lauren would have stared back until the boy looked away. This new, broken Lauren just shut her eyes.
Patrick said, ‘They left a message on my phone, but I didn’t get it until this morning. What happened?’
Lauren couldn’t respond to that immediately. She was floored by another wave of sobbing. A red-haired man – perhaps a new uncle of Mrs Gooch’s baby girl – cheered loudly as he rounded the corner into the bay, holding aloft an ostentatious bunch of lilies. Mrs Gooch glanced pointedly at Lauren and the cheering man said, ‘What?’ and ‘Oh,’ as he looked in their direction. Patrick turned and briskly pulled the curtain around, giving everyone the relief of the impression of privacy. After a time, words pushed through Lauren’s swollen throat in bits.
‘I don’t know why I keep crying. I’m fine, I’ll be fine. Nothing happened. I think I’m going mad, that’s all.’
She gave a mirthless laugh, holding on tightly to her husband, making dark patches of wet and snot on the shoulder of his shirt. Patrick smelled of tea tree shampoo and his own slightly smoky scent. He smelled like home.
‘Lauren, my heart,’ said Patrick as he held Lauren’s face between his hands and smiled down at her. ‘You were mad before.’
That made her laugh for real, and the bad spell was broken. They both laughed, and then Lauren was crying again, and Patrick wiped her eyes with a wad of the cheap hospital tissues from the box by the bed. At that moment, the babies were almost as serene as Mrs Gooch’s. She really didn’t know why she kept crying. It didn’t make sense, when she saw what she and Patrick had made.
Patrick moved towards the cot. ‘Morning, boys,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ve been kind to your mother.’ He turned back to Lauren. ‘Did they keep you awake?’
‘Of course they did. They’re babies.’
Her vision began to swim and sway, her eyelids felt heavy.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but his voice was muffled and far away. Sorry for what, she thought.
When she opened her eyes he was on the other side of the bed. Odd, she thought, I don’t remember falling asleep. A few seconds had gone, snap, a filmic scene change.
‘I spoke to my mother this morning,’ he was saying. ‘She sends her love. She wanted me to tell you, you did really well, you know, most women would have gone straight for a C-section.’
Lauren would never stop wishing that she had done just that. She couldn’t go back now, nothing would change what had happened during the birth, her stupid decisions, her worthless birth plan. But the regret was heavy on her. She felt like a fool for defying the consultant, even as she blamed him for planting the doubts in her mind, about whether she was capable, whether she would succeed. Perhaps if he’d believed in her from the start, she would have been fine.
‘If it was me giving birth to twins,’ the consultant had said, ‘I’d have a C-section.’
Ridiculous. He was a man. How could he know what it was like to give birth?
‘Thanks,’ she’d said, ungratefully. ‘I’ll think about it.’
My body knows what it’s doing, she thought. I’ll let nature take its course. I think I can trust in myself to be able to push these babies out on my own. People have been doing this since people have existed. How hard can it really be? Everyone has to be born, right?
Idiot. She hadn’t done well. She’d been washed through the birth, powerless, on a tide of modern medical intervention. They’d done well, the numerous, nameless nurses, midwives, doctors – without them she would have died, and the babies, too. But Lauren? She didn’t feel that she’d done anything but fail.
‘You’re a hero, honey,’ said Patrick. ‘You deserve a medal.’
I do not, thought Lauren. But she smiled, pasting it thinly over her pain.
After a moment, Patrick asked, ‘When are you coming out?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lauren. ‘I don’t know when they’ll let me.’
‘They don’t have to let you. You can discharge yourself.’
The idea seemed absurd. Lauren had assumed they were in charge. ‘Can I?’
‘Of course. It’s not prison.’
Home. She could go home.
‘I want to go home,’ said Lauren.
‘Let’s go.’
Lauren gaped at him. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Why not? I brought the car seats. I’ll go and get them.’
‘Honestly Patrick, I don’t think they’ll let me. What about the bleed, when they took me back into theatre—’
‘Of course they will. You’re OK now, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Well then.’
‘And there’s the other thing,’ she said, ‘the tranquilliser. I’m still a bit high, to tell the truth.’
Patrick examined the size of Lauren’s pupils.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Better.’
‘The hospital didn’t say what it was, in the message, only that you became very upset and needed some medication. Did something happen to you?’
Yes, thought Lauren, someone tried to take our babies. I escaped. No one else saw. But then, it wasn’t true, everyone said so. They said it was a hallucination. And yet it seemed so real.
‘Lauren?’
She’d been gazing, blurry-eyed, into the middle distance. For how long? She tried to remember what Patrick had asked her.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said that you can tell me, whatever it is. Did something happen last night?’
A flash of cold, a blinding light. Lauren’s nostrils filled with that muddy fish smell. Goosebumps, as all the hair on her arms stood up. Could it have been real?
‘No,’ she said, ‘not really. I thought I saw something. I thought there was someone here who couldn’t have been. Doesn’t matter now.’
‘Of course it matters,’ said Patrick, leaning in, all concern. ‘It sounds scary, you mean like a waking dream or something?’
‘Yes, I think so. I wasn’t asleep though – I hadn’t slept, I haven’t slept properly in three days—’
‘Well, that’s it then, isn’t it? You’re not crazy, you just need some sleep.’
Yes. That was it. So obvious.
Patrick went on, ‘No one can sleep in hospital, it’s so hot and noisy. You know, I read an article about sleep deprivation, it’s more important than you think, to get good rest. No-brainer, really.’
Fatigue rolled over Lauren, pressing her down into the hard mattress, pulling on her eyelids, stinging her eyes.
‘I feel like I’ll never sleep again.’
‘Oh, but don’t worry. It’s not forever, it’s only for a few weeks. Then the sleep gets better.’
This seemed impossible. ‘Really? Only a few weeks?’
‘That’s what Mother said. I slept through the night at six weeks, apparently.’
‘You did?’
‘And, if you come home, you’ll have all our own bedding, our own loo. I’ll be there to help.’
Lauren felt the tantalising pull of normality, but she was a patient now. It was her duty to lie there and be treated. She’d been institutionalised, in two days flat.
‘I want to. But I’m not sure I’m ready. I think, maybe I should stay, just for a few more days . . . ’
Patrick took hold of one of Lauren’s hands, where a drip needle attachment was taped in place. ‘Lauren, honey. It’s a big deal, having a baby. Having two at the same time is huge. But. You’ll be better off at home. I don’t like the idea that you were here, all alone, seeing things and losing it in the middle of the night. You need to be where I can make sure you’re OK.’
Lauren was thinking about the emergency, the bleed. If she’d been at home then she might have died. A tear dropped onto her front. They seemed to come so easily. ‘I think I might need to stay here,’ she said, thinking: near the drugs. Near the doctors.
‘You hate hospitals. And, no offence but, you stink. No one’s looking out for you here. Has anyone even offered to run you a bath?’
She hadn’t thought about the bathroom. She couldn’t go back in there. Just hearing him mention the bath caused the fear to rise again. It put her straight back to the night before, when she’d been sitting in the bathtub, rocking her two babies under the strobing strip-light as the locked door was opened from the outside and a dark figure came towards her. No no no no get away get away from me. She’d screamed and screamed. But it wasn’t her, it wasn’t the disgusting black-tongued woman, it was a nurse and behind her a man in a green uniform, then there were others, crowding into the small room, more nurses, and a doctor, but she kept screaming, searching the shadows behind and between them. Where is she? Where’s that woman, the one with the basket? Get her away from me, I’m not going back out there, I’m not, I’m not—
‘There’s no one there,’ someone kept saying. ‘Look, see for yourself.’
The crowd opened up, various people stepped aside so there was a clear view. She looked and looked, through the open door into the bay. Things kept happening in her peripheral vision. Near the ceiling, something was hanging from sticky feet, reaching long fingers to curl through the gaps in the air vent, but when she looked straight at it there was nothing there, only a shadow, a cobweb. A pedal bin became a squatting demon when she looked away, then became a bin again when she looked back. She knew she was breathing too fast because the nurse kept saying, ‘Breathe slowly, Lauren,’ and her heart, her racing heart, she thought it might burst.
The man she later learned was Dr Gill held a white paper cup to her mouth and tipped in two blue pills, then held up another of water to wash them down.
‘What did you give me?’ she asked, holding the pills behind her teeth.
‘They’ll help you to calm down and think straight,’ said the doctor.
She swallowed hard, the pills sticking in her throat despite the water, a dry, bitter taste. But the panic was lifting. The woman had gone.
‘You’re safe, Mrs Tranter. Come out of the bath now.’
She wasn’t going to hand the babies over to anyone so they pulled her up as best they could and helped her step down from the bath onto the floor. Through the open bathroom door, she could see that the curtain, which had been drawn around the cubicle where she’d seen the woman, was back against the wall, exactly where it had been all day. The dawn had bloomed and bathed the room in buttercup yellow.
Everything was clean, surfaces spotless but nevertheless she thought she could detect a damp smell of mildew. Strong hands led her back to bed, past the chair where the woman had been sitting. No, where she thought she’d seen the woman sitting. As she shuffled past, with a baby son gripped in each arm, the nurse and the security guard holding her upright, she saw, she thought she saw, three silverfish spiralling out from the centre of the pale green vinyl seat in an almost synchronised wheel. She heard a clattering, a rapid tick-ticking sound of hundreds of tiny insect feet, which she surely must have imagined, and they disappeared over the edges of the chair and into its crevices.
‘Lauren? Are you OK?’ Patrick’s voice was distant, as if heard through a wall. The ward and the people in it had dissolved slightly, back into blocks of smudged colour.
A thought occurred to her. If the woman with the basket was real, she might come back again. No one had stopped her, no one saw her. Not the nurses, not the patients. After DS Harper had left this morning, Lauren had asked Mrs Gooch, tentatively, if she’d seen anyone on the ward in the night who shouldn’t have been there. The other woman had shaken her head slowly and given a long and ponderous ‘no’, implying that even the question was insane. ‘I heard you, um, shouting,’ said Mrs Gooch. ‘That was what woke me up. I couldn’t really see what was going on, because the curtain was pulled across, but there wasn’t anyone suspicious here, I’m quite sure of that. This is a secure ward. Are you . . . OK now?’
‘I’m fine,’ Lauren had said, hearing the tremor in her own voice, smiling to cover it up. Mrs Gooch had cleared her throat nervously, and although Lauren wanted to ask her about whether she heard the singing, she sensed that any more questions would only make Mrs Gooch more uncomfortable.
So, the creepy woman was sly. She knew how to get past security, how to make sure she wasn’t seen by anyone. Therefore, Lauren should go home, where the woman would not think to look, and wouldn’t be able to come after her. That was the answer.
That’s if it was real. But the drugs, and the daylight, had created a distance, allowed her to look at what happened from both sides. It had seemed real, but really it couldn’t have been, because if it were then someone else would have seen the creepy woman. The singing would have woken Mrs Gooch, before the shouting did. Security was tight on the ward – the woman would have had to get herself buzzed through the locked doors, then walk right past the nurse on the desk. So it couldn’t be. But if it wasn’t real then it was inside her head and it would be there inside her head no matter where she went, wouldn’t it? And, at home, there were no blue pills.
Everything snapped into sharp focus. She gazed into Patrick’s worried face. ‘What if it happens again?’ said Lauren, ‘What if I start seeing things, or . . . ’
Patrick was shaking his head, making a shh sound, and he said, ‘Take each day as it comes. You can’t stay here until you’re sane. You won’t ever leave.’
The joke was delivered deadpan, as usual, and took a moment to register. A mischievous smile played on his lips as he waited for her to laugh. But she couldn’t, not this time. It was too close to the truth. Maybe they would keep her here until they thought she was sane. Perhaps she ought to leave now, while she still had the chance.
Chapter 8
Harper sank into the swivel chair in her office and flipped her notebook open on the desk.
‘Where the bloody hell have you been, Jo?’
She flipped the notebook shut again and turned to smile sweetly at Detective Inspector Thrupp, who filled the doorframe with his grey-suited form. His blue tie was askew, as usual. He tugged at it now, loosening it further – by the end of the day it was usually completely undone and flung over one shoulder like a very thin decorative scarf.
