Playing Nice

I INSIST ON BEING the one to talk to Bronagh. It makes sense anyway for Pete, as the journalist, to track down Miles’s ex-colleagues, but it’s more than that. I want to look Bronagh in the eye and ask whether there was ever anything between her and Pete. And while I can tell Pete isn’t happy about us meeting, neither can he object without digging himself any deeper into the hole he’s in.

Do I really think there’s anything to be suspicious of? I’m not sure, any more than I’m sure about the other accusations that have been swirling around him. Of course, if it turns out there was something, on one level it would be hypocritical of me to mind, given that I’ve not been a saint myself. But I would mind, all the same. Pete’s loyalty is so much a part of his character that something like that would be a big deal for him. He isn’t the sort to have a quick fling and put it out of his head. It would be a sign that our relationship is fundamentally flawed.

What was that line from that old TV show? “The innocent have nothing to fear.” And yet here we are, and I do fear. Fear losing my family, fear what the courts might order, fear what Miles Lambert might do in his unstoppable drive to get Theo back.

But most of all, fear what I might find out.

I try to push all that from my mind as I enter the Costa on the ground floor of St. Alexander’s where Bronagh suggested meeting. She’s already there, carrying a smoothie and some kind of cake toward a table, and for a moment I stop and study her. The uniform suits her: The scrubs the neonatal nurses wear, made of thin blue cotton, flatter her lithe frame the way pajamas or a T-shirt would, outlining the shape of her buttocks, the slimness of her shoulders, making her look almost undressed. Today she has her jet-black hair tied in a plait that rests between her shoulder blades. Is she pretty? Yes, I decide, reasonably so. Is she beautiful? Probably not, but then, women don’t need to be beautiful to attract men.

I buy myself a coffee, playing for time, then summon up my resolve and go over. “Bronagh. Hi.”

“Oh—hi.” She raises the cake, which I now see is a chocolate muffin. “Hope you don’t mind. This is breakfast and lunch.” It’s almost three P.M.

“You must be really busy. I won’t keep you long.” I sit down. “You’re probably wondering why I wanted to meet.”

Bronagh’s blue eyes give nothing away. “I guess I was a wee bit surprised when you got in touch.”

“And I was surprised to find you back at St. Alexander’s. Pete told me you’d been suspended.”

Bronagh shrugs. “That’s routine when they’re conducting investigations. It’s all cleared up now.”

“You mean, the lie he told for you worked,” I say quietly.

Something flashes across Bronagh’s face. Alarm? Defensiveness? One thing is certain: She definitely knows what I’m talking about. “What lie?”

“When we were interviewed by NHS Resolution, Pete told the investigators he remembered seeing the security tag on Theo’s leg within a few minutes of him being transferred into your incubator. But in fact, a registrar noticed it still hadn’t been put on hours later.”

“Maybe the registrar was wrong, then, and Pete was right.”

“He sent me a picture that day—Pete, that is. From his phone, so it’s got the time it was taken on it. In that photo, Theo isn’t wearing a security tag.” I lean forward. “And, partly because of that stupid lie, Pete is now being investigated by the police. They’re accusing him of swapping the babies deliberately. He’s already been questioned under caution.”

“Jesus.” Bronagh’s hand flies to her mouth. Her look of dismay surely can’t be fake.

“As a result of which, he’s not allowed to be alone with Theo,” I continue, deliberately piling on the pressure. “Which, since we’re also facing a custody hearing with the Lamberts, means it’s quite possible we’ll lose Theo entirely. You can imagine what the prospect of that is doing to Pete.”

“Shite in a bucket.” Bronagh looks appalled. “I had no idea. The fact is, things got pretty crazy around here—there was one lot investigating how Theo and David got mixed up, and another lot crawling over why our mortality rates weren’t better. That’s when I messaged Pete—when it looked like they were trying to find someone to scapegoat. But as it turned out, once the review was over, they realized they needed every experienced nurse they could get.”

I frown. “The mortality review is over?”

Bronagh nods. “And not a moment too soon.”

“So what did it find? Was there a suspicious pattern of deaths?”

“What?” Bronagh looks pained. “Jesus, no. There’s only one thing wrong with our NICU, and that’s where it is.” When I still look puzzled, she gestures up at the atrium. “Right in the middle of central London. Over half my salary goes to rent, and since I can’t afford to live anywhere within fifty minutes of here, half of what’s left over goes to travel. Then there’s the fact that we do twelve-hour shifts to minimize the number of handovers—it’s a pretty grueling schedule even if you’re used to it. We’re permanently understaffed. I should be looking after one or two babies, tops, but it’s a rare week when I don’t have three or even four. Plus, our NICU gets all the cases like yours, the babies born in expensive Harley Street clinics that aren’t equipped to deal with them, as well as the health tourists and the mothers from deprived areas who maybe don’t use the midwifery system as well as they should. Oh, and we just had five years of government thinking we could probably manage just as well on half as much money. It’s hardly surprising we had a dip in our outcomes.”

“So nothing…sinister, then?” I say. “Nothing that could be attributed to an individual?”

“Oh heck. You haven’t been watching Nurses Who Kill, have you? Look, every single neonatal death here is investigated by postmortem and clinical review. And we’re a small team. If we had a Beverley Allitt in our NICU, she or he wouldn’t last a month without being spotted.”

Is Bronagh telling the truth? There’s no reason to think she isn’t. But then, if she had somehow been responsible for swapping Theo and David, she’d hardly say so.

“There’s something else I have to ask you,” I say after a moment.

“What’s that?”

“Have you seen Pete at all, since we left the NICU? As opposed to messaging, or speaking to him on the phone?”

Bronagh nods. “He and Theo came back to the NICU around Theo’s first birthday. He’d baked a cake. Little Theo looked so sweet, tucked up in that blue papoose Pete wore.”

“Any other time? After that? Or before?”

“Let me see.” Bronagh looks thoughtful. “I might have bumped into him on that bike ride the lads did. A group of us swung by a bar where they were drinking one night. But I can’t recall whether your man was there or not.”

And that’s how I know she’s telling the truth about the mortality review, and there not being anything untoward going on in the NICU. Because, as it now turns out, Bronagh is a very bad liar indeed.

* * *

—

BRONAGH LOOKS ACROSS THE café. “There’s Paula.” She sounds relieved. “I’d best be getting back upstairs.”

I look in the direction of her gaze. Paula, the nurse who’d been so stressy about David that day, is coming toward us. “Do you know Paula well?” I ask.

“Sure, she’s a grand girl. Why?”

“There’s no chance she could have swapped David and Theo, is there?”

Even as I say it, I know how desperate it sounds. Bronagh looks at me askance. “And why in God’s name would she do that?”

I can’t answer. My suspicions, which had sounded so logical when I was listing them to Pete, now just seem silly and melodramatic. “I don’t know,” I say helplessly. “Because she could?”

“Look,” Bronagh says patiently. “First, she’s not a nutter, any more than I am. Second, if a NICU nurse was going to go crazy and start playing God, they wouldn’t do it by swapping babies around. A simple DNA test, and it would all come out. No—what happened to Theo and David was a tragic mistake in a busy, understaffed ward.” She lowers her voice. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, given that you’re suing the place. But there were five admissions that day—that’s almost double the norm. Every one an emergency. And we were down two nurses, what with the winter vomiting bug that was going around. Everyone knows that’s the kind of environment where mistakes get made. And if that isn’t mentioned in the case report—well, someone’s trying to buff something, because it should be.”

Paula’s reached our table now. “Coming up?” she asks Bronagh. “Or are you busy?”

“Remember Theo Riley’s mum?” Bronagh says, indicating me. “We were just chatting.”

Paula looks no more pleased to see me than she did two years ago. “Oh, right. Well, it’s almost handover, so…”

“Sure.” Bronagh stands up.

“Wait,” I say quickly. “I’ve got a question for you, Paula. That first day, when David and Theo got swapped, were either of the Lamberts around?”

Wariness flashes across Paula’s face. “I’ve already told the hospital investigators everything I remember.”