‘She’s got carpal tunnel syndrome,’ Simone said, without looking up from her chart. ‘The swelling is fluid, and her blood pressure is normal.’ She was talking to me like my supervising midwife, with authority, yet doubt still flickered in my mind.
‘She’s been in early labour a long time,’ I insisted. ‘And the baby has hardly moved down the birth canal. Shouldn’t she be assessed for a possible emergency C-section?’
Simone looked up from the chart and for the first time I saw uncertainty in her face. ‘I’ll call Hu– Dr Warrington back,’ she said. ‘Always worth checking with a doctor.’
Less than a couple of minutes later Dr Warrington was back and I watched as he did a number of checks. ‘You can leave now, Lena,’ he said, his back to me. ‘It’s all under control.’
I left the room, an uneasy feeling gnawing away at me. My instinct was telling me that something was wrong with Natalie, but Simone was much more experienced and Hugh Warrington was a doctor. I had no choice but to trust them.
My shift ended before Simone’s so I couldn’t travel home with her. But when I returned to my student digs I went straight up to my room and grabbed my notepad from my desk. I turned to a page from a recent lecture about pain relief and diamorphine. And, yes, there it was, scribbled in my handwriting:Consider a reduced dose in women who weigh less than 50kg.
Had Simone lied about Natalie’s weight deliberately to validate her reasons for the supposedly higher dose? But I had seen that Dr Warrington had administered five milligrams. What were they doing?
47
LENA
Oliver stares down at the pink teddy bear. ‘I remember when my mum knitted these. She was in hospital, before she got really sick. We were too old for them, but …’ He strokes the ear tenderly, then looks up at me. ‘You found this in your neighbours’ garden?’
‘Well, in the hedge between their garden and mine. The weird thing is … you say Simone went missing last August but my neighbours only moved in a few weeks ago. I’m not sure why they’d have her key.’ I remember Marielle’s expression when I showed it to her. She was insistent it was theirs while Henry contradicted her. ‘What did Simone retrain as? Was it an electrician by any chance?’
‘Yes! How did you know?’
I tell him about the wall of newspaper clippings I found in the Morgans’ home. ‘And this one was from theSalisbury Journal. Look.’ I bring up the photo on my phone and hand it to him across the table. ‘Is this Simone? At the front of the photo?’
His eyes narrow, his face turning ashen. ‘Yes. That’s her.’
‘So that’s two things that link them to Simone.’
‘Could they be part of this drugs gang that Simone was running from?’ he asks. He’s still dabbing at the grains of sugar on the table. I remember this about him, how he could never sit still. How he fizzed with pent-up energy.
‘I don’t know. But something isn’t right about them.’ I tell him everything, from the very beginning, leaving nothing out. I haven’t told anyone else the whole story without sanitizing it so they wouldn’t worry, or leaving parts out that cast me in a bad light. But with Oliver, a man I was once so close to but who is now almost a stranger, it’s cathartic. We order another coffee, Oliver becoming more manic as the conversation progresses, not helped by the caffeine. When I’ve finished he’s silent. And for a few moments he’s actually still.
‘Do you think you should go to the police?’ I ask, when he doesn’t say anything.
His eyes are anguished. ‘I can’t. This is the frustrating thing! She made us promise that whatever happened we wouldn’t go to the police. She was terrified that if we did the gang would know where she was.’
‘But she could be in danger. I don’t know what the Morgans have to do with it but there must be some connection.’
‘Do you think they knew Hugh Warrington? Perhaps they were part of what was going on at the hospital. You said Henry was a surgeon?’
I consider this. ‘He was, but in neurology and, according to my online research, never worked at St Calvert’s or any maternity hospital. Unless they knew each other fromtraining or from working at a previous hospital together?’ Is that what this is all about? That Henry was involved in what Hugh and Simone were up to back in 1999?
Oliver taps his nails against the floral oilcloth. ‘Shit, Lena, I actually don’t know what to do for the best. If I go to the police about this and she’s just hiding from the gang I could put her in danger. They might still be looking for her. But if she is actually missing, properly missing, and she’s in danger … God.’ He buries his face in his hands and I stare at him helplessly. I don’t know what to suggest either.
He looks up at me, his fingers pressed into his cheeks. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘I’m not sure. But I have a bad feeling, Ol.’
His face softens at the shortened version of his name. He reaches across the table, the tips of his fingers lightly touch mine. ‘Me too.’ Then he retracts his hand and clears his throat. ‘You know, I did have a phone call earlier this year, February, March time. From some guy who said he was a reporter.’
I sit up straighter.
‘He was asking me about St Calvert’s. Said he was doing a piece about it being twenty-five years since a baby was found on the steps of the hospital. I remember you and Simone telling me about it.’
‘Oh, my God! Yes! I haven’t thought about that for a long time.’ It had been a few days before I left my training and just before I ended up confronting Simone with my suspicions over the drugs fraud. Finding the newborn baby had been overshadowed by everything that cameafter. Less than a year later I’d read about the court case and realized with relief that someone else must have blown the whistle on them.
It was Simone who found the baby on the steps of the hospital. It was around 6 a.m. and still dark. I’d been on a night shift. I was just leaving and Simone was arriving. She said someone had abandoned the newborn. We headed into the hospital together with the baby to report it, and to get confirmation that the baby hadn’t been born to any patients from St Calvert’s. I remember, years later when I first held Rufus in my arms, thinking of how desperate the mother must have been to abandon her baby and I’d cuddled Rufus even tighter.
