‘If you don’t calm down, Sophie, I’ll be calling them back and they almost certainly are going to be charging you with neglect. Getting angry and getting arrested at the hospital isn’t going to help.’
‘You love this, don’t you? You’ve been wanting to take him off me since before he was even born, every time I see your face I want to?—’
Eve saw Sophie draw back her hand and instinctively she grabbed her wrist. Sophie might be tiny and painfully thin, but she was fuelled by desperation and it took all of Eve’s strength to hold onto her.
‘Don’t do it. If you want to see Carter, you need to step back and just breathe.’ Eve’s voice sounded melodic, even to her own ears, almost like the words were a lullaby.
‘Can I really see him?’ Sophie’s eyes widened and as Eve nodded, she yanked her hand free and threw her arms around Eve, almost knocking her backwards for a second time with the force of her embrace and the smell of unwashed skin. Sophie clearly loved her son and yet her actions had nearly killed him. It was one more reminder that sometimes love just wasn’t enough.
8
Sophie had sobbed throughout the time she’d spent at Carter’s bedside, her hands clenching and unclenching as she’d begged for his forgiveness, revealing nails that had been bitten down so far that some of them were bleeding. There were obvious scars on her arms, from what Eve could almost guarantee were self-harm injuries. Her wrists were so thin the shape of her bones was visible through the skin and she had the look of a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest weeks before it was ready. The reality wasn’t far off and she barely looked more than a child herself.
‘They’re going to take him for good this time. I’ve blown my last chance.’ Sophie had turned towards Eve when she’d told her she needed to leave, her bloodshot eyes pleading for a just a little longer, even before the words came out of her mouth. ‘Please don’t make me go, I don’t know when they’ll let me see him again. Just five more minutes.Please.’
There’d been none of the aggression in her tone that she’d directed towards her social worker earlier, perhaps because Pippa had decided to use the opportunity to go off and make some phone calls to determine what would happen once Carterwas ready to be released from hospital. Sophie herself was assessed as not needing treatment, at least not by the team in A&E, but it was obvious to anyone that she needed help. It was why Eve couldn’t bear the thought of her just walking out of the department and heading who knew where and, worse still, with God knows who.
‘You can have ten more minutes with Carter, but only if you agree to stay on with me afterwards, and make a plan for what you’re going to do next.’ Eve had held her gaze and Sophie had nodded slowly. If it meant getting to spend more time with her son, Eve had been pretty sure the other woman would have agreed to pretty much anything. What soon became clear was that making a plan for Sophie wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as getting her to agree to stay and discuss it.
Eve had known that Sophie’s explanation of what had been going on in her life would be hard to listen to, but it was even worse than she’d been expecting.
‘My landlord kicked us out, that was why we were sofa surfing and staying at my friend’s place. I’d forgotten she even had a pond in the garden. I couldn’t pay the rent and my bastard of a landlord decided that paying it in another way wasn’t working for him any more.’ Sophie curled her lip. ‘It didn’t seem to bother him last month, but I suppose that was a novelty. Or maybe this month he’s got someone else willing to lay down and think of England, while the fat old bastard climbs on top of them and gives a few half-hearted thrusts before it’s all over. That was the small mercy of it all, I suppose. Between his bulk and the smell of chip fat, I could barely breathe.’
‘That’s no way to live.’ Eve tried not to judge, and in her job she’d seen pretty much everything, but sometimes it was incredibly hard. In this instance, she was judging Sophie’s landlord far more harshly than she judged the woman herself.
‘I know it’s not.’ There was an edge of defensive to Sophie’s tone and a defiant tilt of the chin. ‘Don’t you think I want more for Carter? Of course I do. You’ve got no idea how bloody hard it is though, someone like you. None of you lot do.’
‘You’re right, I don’t, but maybe it would help if you told me.’ Eve locked eyes with her for a second time and, after what seemed like an interminable silence, Sophie’s chin dropped and she nodded slowly.
‘My dad was never around and Mum always had boyfriends. Some of them were nice and some of them weren’t. Eventually she moved one of them in and he was always far more interested in me than he should have been. Coming into my room uninvited and pulling me onto his lap for cuddles and kissing me on the mouth. I was still just a kid for Christ’s sake.’ Sophie let go of a shuddering sigh and Eve had to clamp her arms to the side of her body to stop herself from reaching out. ‘I stayed out all hours just so I didn’t have to be around him, but I made some bad choices and when I ended up pregnant with Carter, my mum didn’t want to know. So we were on our own.’
Sophie shook her head, unable to continue and Eve couldn’t hold back from putting an arm around the other woman’s shoulders. What surprised her most was that Sophie didn’t shrug her off.
‘I can’t imagine how hard that was.’ Eve really couldn’t. She might have lost her mother at a relatively young age and her father might have been emotionally distant, but she’d always had a roof over her head. Yet she’d still felt a huge gap in her life, so the void Sophie had experienced must have seemed unbridgeable. She wanted to promise this incredibly vulnerable young woman that everything would be okay from this point onwards, but she knew it wasn’t something she could say and the last thing Sophie needed was even more broken promises.
‘No, you can’t, and maybe if I’d known just how hard it was going to get, I might just have ended things there and then. The harder things got, the worse I felt about myself and the more I needed something to numb that. It started off with drinking and a bit of weed, but it kept spiralling until I was on far worse than that. I want to get clean, I really do, and I’ve tried for Carter, but social services are right. I must be a shit mum, because I can’t do it, not even for him.’
Sophie started to sob then, her whole body heaving with emotion and Eve wrapped her arms around her this time, holding her as tightly as she could, able to feel just how painfully thin the other woman was. ‘It’s an incredibly hard thing to do, but it’s obvious you love Carter and that you want to make things right. If there was a chance to try again, would you want to take it?’
‘Of course I would.’ Sophie’s head shot back. ‘But who’s going to give me a chance? I’ve already messed up all the stuff Pippa has tried to sort for me, and she told me last time that it was the end of the road.’
‘I might know someone who can help.’ Eve crossed her fingers, hoping that she wasn’t raising Sophie’s hopes with no chance of delivering.
‘I’ll do anything.’ She looked at Eve with such desperation that all Eve could do was nod. Now, she had to deliver. She knew that both Drew and Felix volunteered for Domusamare. So, as soon as she left Sophie’s side, she put in a call to Drew, only to discover he was in the middle of an autopsy and couldn’t be disturbed. The person who had answered the phone hadn’t even been able to tell her how long he might be. That just left Felix and, as much as Eve had vowed to try and avoid him, at least until she could get a handle on the attraction she felt towards him and preferably make it disappear, she knew she had to put her own feelings to one side for Sophie’s sake. That was why shewas on her way to the Occupational Therapy Department to find him, silently praying that he might be able to offer Sophie the lifeline she so desperately needed.
Felix stared at the number displayed on his phone. It was a call from the US, but not a contact he had stored. It could be anything from a scam call to a catch-up with an old friend who just happened to have changed their number, or even one who was taking the opportunity to call him from work. But, as he looked at it again, and a feeling of dread washed over him he just knew it was Meredith and he had a horrible feeling he knew what she wanted. He could just have rejected the call, or let it ring out and ignore the voicemail message she would inevitably leave. It would be far easier that way and he’d be able to go on trying to pretend that Meredith didn’t exist outside the bubble of the life he’d lived in America. He’d kept so much of that hidden even from his own family. If he’d told Eden that he’d fallen in love with a former drug addict, she’d rightly have called him a hypocrite and asked what the hell he thought he was doing after all the warnings he’d given her. Yet, he’d been arrogant enough to think he was different. Growing up with an alcoholic mother, both he and Eden had developed a kind of saviour complex, wanting to step in and help people who were struggling with addictions of their own.
Felix had been certain that he could handle it; had felt as though he had all this compassion for people in the grip of addiction that had nowhere to go and, when he’d moved to the States, volunteering at an addiction crisis centre had felt like a natural step. But Meredith had taken Felix to the edge and coming home had been the only way to break the cycle. Nowshe was calling, he was sure of it, the ringtone on his phone loud and insistent. He could so easily cut off the call and block the number, but instead he found himself reaching for the green icon to answer it.
‘Hello.’ There was still a part of him that hoped it wouldn’t be Meredith, but he recognised the sigh she omitted, even before she began to talk.
‘Felix, thank God. I’ve missed you so much.’ He wished he couldn’t detect the lack of sincerity in Meredith’s voice, but it was obvious. She was speaking so quickly, like she was rushing to get to the point and, before he could even respond, she laid the ground work for what he was certain was going to come next.
‘I really need your help.’
‘Okay, I’m back in the UK, but Karl can arrange whatever help you need to get you back into rehab.’ He held his breath, hoping against hope that she’d say that was what she wanted, but he knew deep down that getting back into rehab wasn’t why she’d called him. Meredith knew where to go for that kind of help, but she’d cut off every single person who’d tried to persuade her to get it, changing her number and telling them to get out of her life. Despite the fact she’d done the same thing with her own family, Felix knew they’d still be desperately waiting for her call, ready to do anything and drop everything to get her the help she needed. But she wasn’t contacting him because she wanted to quit the drugs, and he’d promised her family he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise her finally reaching the point where she accepted that getting clean was the only option left.
‘Felix, I owe some nasty people a lot of money. I thought I’d got together everything I needed to pay them back, but then I got mugged and now they’re telling me that if I don’t deliver they’ll make me pay some other way.’ It sounded like a line from a bad made-for-TV movie and when she started to sob downthe phone, his mind raced. He knew she was lying about having got the money together and it being stolen. She might even have been lying about the ‘nasty people’, although he knew they existed and that if Meredith owed them money for drugs, they were more than capable of making her pay ‘one way or another’. Whatever the situation, any money he sent her would be going straight to the suppliers and even if she cleared her debts that wouldn’t be the end of it. She’d just run up another set of debts getting her hands on more drugs. It was a cycle she’d repeated with everyone who loved her, until she’d cut off contact with them altogether. Her family had been advised by professionals to make the hardest decision possible and to refuse Meredith any further financial support so that she could hit rock bottom and finally admit the kind of help she really needed. It made sense, but it was a terrifying leap of faith all the same. Felix couldn’t go against their best chance of saving Meredith from herself, but that didn’t make it any less agonising. If there was any way of reaching a compromise to keep her safe in the meantime, he was going to take it and he was certain her family would feel the same.
