Grace Matthews made a note on a lined yellow pad, even though her male colleague was silently transcribing everything I said on his laptop, his fingers flying across the keys without him needing to look at either the keyboard or screen. Grace had a proper pen, I noticed, an old-fashioned one with a nib, which somehow seemed out of kilter with her dowdy appearance. Perhaps it was a present from someone. “Sorry for interrupting,” she said as she wrote. “Go on.”
“And then they worked on both babies simultaneously. I think the first thing was getting the umbilical lines in. The ambulance staff were doing their handover reports, and people were coming and going—it was pretty chaotic, and the doctors and nurses were turning from cot to cot, doing whatever it was they needed to do. I couldn’t get close—I didn’t really try to, in case I got in the way. Then there was a bit of a lull, and when the medical team was happy, they took Theo’s mobile incubator over to a much bigger one in the corner and transferred him. That’s when I met Bronagh—the main nurse responsible for Theo. She looked after the incubators in that area, so she hadn’t really been involved before.”
Grace Matthews nodded. “And you got a pretty good look at Theo then, presumably? When all the initial interventions were done?”
I thought back. “Yes. I remember thinking I hadn’t really been able to see his face before.”
“And can you recall seeing a tag on him at that point?”
“I think so,” I said cautiously. “I mean, I couldn’t absolutely swear to it, but when I try to picture it, it seems to me he had the security tag on his right ankle.” I nodded slowly. “In fact, I’m sure that’s right—that Theo had a tag on when I saw him in the larger incubator.”
A frown touched Grace Matthews’s face. “But you didn’t actually see the nurse put it on?”
“No. But…” I stopped. “This is hard for me to admit. But the moment I found myself in a quiet corner and it felt like the immediate emergency was over, I broke down. I was crying for several minutes. She must have done it then, as soon as she took over. But I literally couldn’t see in front of my own nose.”
“Of course,” Grace Matthews said. “I do understand, Mr. Riley. Seeing your child—or rather, the child you think is yours—being admitted to intensive care is obviously very stressful.” She pushed the cap onto her fountain pen and placed it on her yellow pad. “Thank you for speaking to us today.”
58
MADDIE
I KEEP QUIET DURING Pete’s interview with Grace Matthews. It’s him they want to talk to, after all, the person at the scene, and I didn’t even get to the NICU until long after the mix-up had happened.
Afterward, we get an Uber home, too exhausted to face the Tube. As we crawl through the traffic, I look across at him. “I didn’t realize you saw the tag on Theo’s leg so soon.”
He goes on looking out the window. “Well, I said I couldn’t swear to it.”
“Yes. But after that, you said you were certain. You told her you could picture it.”
He doesn’t reply at first, and for a moment I think he’s going to say something else. But all he says is, “Pretty certain, yes.”
“So the mix-up must have happened before that, in those first few minutes.”
“When the original tags were loose. That’s right.”
I frown. “Were the tags loose? You didn’t mention that.”
“They would have come into the NICU separately, when the babies were zipped into the skin-wrap bags,” he explains. “Grace Matthews would have known that. Although I didn’t actually see them.”
Then how do you know…I almost say, but he forestalls me. “This is so exhausting, isn’t it? All these different legal actions.”
“Perhaps that’s what Miles is counting on. Perhaps he was always planning it this way, to ramp up the pressure.”
Pete only shakes his head. But it’s a gesture of despair, not disagreement.
* * *
—
WHEN WE GET HOME, he gets straight in the car to go and pick up Theo. I open my laptop to check my emails—I’ve told the office I’ll work from home for the rest of the day—but something makes me go into my photo stream instead.
I haven’t looked at the very first picture of my baby—the picture Pete texted while I was still in the recovery room at the private hospital—since the day it was taken. It’s too raw, the memory of my revulsion at it too stark. But it automatically got saved to my iCloud along with all my other pictures, and now here it is. Grainy, a little blurred, taken over the shoulder of a doctor or nurse. No, definitely a nurse: I’d had no way of knowing it at the time, but that’s Bronagh’s slim back and jet-black hair. And the image might be blurry, but Pete always had the latest gadgets and the camera was a powerful one: As well as the stick-thin limbs and nose prongs that even now make me feel nauseous, you can see the tubes coming out of the cooling suit, the brake-light-red glow around the baby’s left ankle from the oxygen sensor.
And no tag. There’s no security tag on the other leg. Of that I’m sure.
Or am I? I peer at the photo again. To use Pete’s phrase, I couldn’t absolutely swear to it. I can’t even say if the wizened little creature in the cooling suit is Theo or David.
And Pete has said what he’s said now. There’d be no point whatsoever in sending this picture to Grace Matthews and saying, sorry, he might have been mistaken. We’d effectively be announcing that he’s an unreliable witness, someone whose entire testimony might be flawed. And that, in turn, might have repercussions for the payout.
No: Better to leave things as they are. As our lawyer said, finding out how the mix-up happened is an internal matter for the hospital. If Pete made a small mistake over the exact timing, it’s hardly a big deal.
59
Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibit 31: deleted texts from Peter Riley’s iPhone, (a) from Peter Riley to Bronagh Walsh, and (b) from Bronagh Walsh to Peter Riley, in reply.
Saw them today. Said I remembered seeing the tag on Theo’s leg a few minutes after he was transferred to your incubator.
You’re a star. xxx
60
PETE
I DROVE TO HIGHGATE to collect Theo from the Lamberts’ on autopilot. Not because I was worried about the small lie I’d told on Bronagh’s behalf—I’d been pretty nonspecific, and in any case, it probably wasn’t even a lie—but because I still couldn’t get my head around everything that was going on. I even found myself wondering if we shouldn’t pull out of suing the hospital—but since that legal action was the only one not costing us anything, and would hopefully raise the funds to pay Anita Chowdry’s fees to boot, it seemed crazy to end it now.
I wasn’t really thinking about the Lamberts as I walked up the steps to their door. I assumed the buzzer would be answered by Tania, or that possibly Lucy would be there, wittering on about cups of tea and being polite to each other. But the door was opened by Miles. He was wearing a T-shirt and running shorts.
“Pete,” he said warmly. “How are you doing?”
I stared at him. I felt something I’d almost never felt in my life—a physical, atavistic hatred, an almost irresistible compulsion to do bloodcurdling violence to another human being. The hairs on the back of my neck rose and my face flushed involuntarily.
“I’ve come to collect Theo,” I said curtly.
“He’s just having a wash—finger painting got a bit messy. He’ll be along in a minute.”
I nodded, unwilling to engage in small talk. Miles put his head on one side and regarded me quizzically.
“You really hate me, don’t you, Pete?” he said softly.
“I don’t hate you,” I said coldly. “I dislike what you’re doing and the way you’re doing it, that’s all.”
“Really?” He studied my face. “No, I think you hate me. I never waste time hating people.” He stepped forward, pulling the door behind him so we couldn’t be overheard. “You know, some pretty dark stuff happens in the scrum. Gouging, punching, a thumb in the shorts, collapsing the front row the moment you’ve got the ball…But after the match is over, you shake hands and buy each other a beer. Because it’s the player who hit you hardest who you respect the most.”
I stared at him. “This is not some fucking game.”
“No.” Miles shook his head emphatically. “It’s a contest. A contest I will win. Not because I hate you, but because the prize of this particular contest is my son.” He suddenly leaned in very close, so he was almost talking over my shoulder, his lips close to my ear. It was all I could do not to flinch. “But. Just. Remember. This. You have him on loan, nothing more. And if you do anything, anything at all, to undermine my future relationship with him, I will seek you out and I will kill you.”
He stood back, smiling, just as Theo pulled the door open and ran out. “Daddeeee!” he cried excitedly, charging into my legs.
“Ready to go, Theo?” Without waiting for an answer, I took his hand and started down the steps.
“Bye, Theo,” Miles called cheerily.
“Bye, Moles,” Theo called back over his shoulder. “Love youuu!”
61
PETE