14
Martha
The health visitor, Irene Fox, walks into the courtroom, led in by the same usher who brought me in. She has a sleeve tattoo just poking out from underneath a black jacket, and a haircut that looks like a crop being grown out. She seems nervous, her features pinched, her shoulders held stiffly. As she takes the secular oath, she gives a small, sardonic smile, showing pointy teeth.
‘When did Layla and her mother first come to see you?’ Ellen says. She is thicker-set than Becky’s lawyer. Less poised too, but seems affected by the proceedings.
‘October time.’ Irene looks over at me.
‘Do you have the exact date?’
‘The eleventh.’
Becky had been nannying for us for just over a week.
‘And when was the second appointment?’
‘The twentieth.’
The leaves had dusted the car park. Becky was keeping me company. Scott was away, at an overnight developers’ conference, so it was just the three of us: Becky, Layla and me. She died at the end of October. Ten days after that, Becky was charged.
‘Thank you. And why were they there?’
‘Layla was a difficult baby. Lots of wind, the mother thought.’ She looks at me again.
How strange this is. To attend a routine appointment, and then to hear it rehashed and repeated back to me, months later. Deconstructed by the court system, and constructed again, into witness statements, testimony, cross-examination. It’s so artificial. It was just an appointment. Just us.
‘Why?’ Ellen says.
‘The baby – Layla – cried a lot, especially after food. Writhing, going red and angry. Looking uncomfortable.’ She pushes her hair back from her forehead. It’s getting in her eyes. ‘Raising her legs up.’
‘And did she have reflux?’
‘Yes. I diagnosed that. I asked the GP to prescribe Gaviscon Infant. And then, when they came back on the twentieth, I asked him to prescribe ranitidine, which is stronger.’
Becky pushed for the second meeting. By that time, I was on the phone for three hours a day, trying to sort out the staffing and the equipment and taking new premises. There was so very much to do, and nobody could do any of it but me. They seemed so vital, those calls that seem so stupid now. Was Becky concerned for Layla or was she … at the end of her tether? ‘Martha, you need to sort this out,’ she had said fiercely to me one night. Was that motivational, or had it been a threat?
‘Did the Gaviscon seem to work?’
‘Not really, no. The mother said that she was still symptomatic. Still crying a lot. Not being sick very much, though, so I thought it might be silent reflux.’
‘Silent reflux?’ Ellen balances her fingertips on the desk and leans her weight against them. The tips blanch white.
‘Reflux without so many outwardly obvious symptoms. The babies are uncomfortable, but it’s less clear why. They don’t always vomit. Sometimes they swallow back the stomach acid. It causes discomfort and wind.’
I sink my head forward on to my hands. Scott shifts in the gallery next to me, placing an arm across the back of the bench and curling it around my shoulders. Mum tuts, behind us, a soft, sympathetic clucking noise.
Becky is looking at me, as she always seems to be, when I raise my eyes again.
‘How much – in your experience – do babies have to cry, before people seek professional help?’
‘Your Honour, if I may …’ Harriet says. She stands and looks attentively at the judge, her mouth set. ‘This witness is a witness of fact. She’s not an expert.’
‘I entirely agree,’ the judge says, simply and quietly.
‘I’ll rephrase,’ Ellen says. ‘Do you know how much Layla was crying?’
‘No,’ Irene says. ‘I don’t. But Martha seemed to suggest it was more than other babies – more than was normal. Her symptoms were on a par with classic silent reflux.’
‘And how was she when you got the GP to prescribe the ranitidine? In the second appointment?’
‘The same. She needed walking around a lot. She needed jiggling after meals. She was crying for much of the second appointment.’
‘So would it be a reasonable assumption that a typical refluxy baby, with these symptom patterns, prescribed what you prescribed … would have been crying pretty much all the time?’
‘Not all the time. But a lot. For many hours per day.’
‘Crying for many hours per day,’ Ellen nods. She pauses, letting it sink in for the jury, then turns to look at them meaningfully. The pause stretches out in the courtroom. Still, she doesn’t speak. I can almost see the awkward, loaded silence, stretched thin, its surface like gossamer.
Here was a baby nobody could cope with, the silence says. Here was a woman lacking the resilience needed to cope with a baby in as much pain as mine. Did it hurt Layla, when it happened? I wonder. Did she know her heart was stopping, her brain dying? My eyes are damp and I blink.
‘And in what percentage of cases would you say the ranitidine works?’
‘Thirty – forty? Sadly, reflux often seems to have to run its course. Sometimes the medicine works, but more often reflux has to go away on its own.’
I can’t help but look across at Becky. She has stopped looking at me, and is instead focusing her gaze up at the judge, or perhaps at the crest behind him. She looks impassive, but I can see the areas of tension she’s holding in her body. Her jaw is quivering just slightly. She always used to feel the cold so much more than me – and I now remember what her jaw used to do. Our walks home from school, from Brighton to Hove, along the coast. We’d talk about what our adult lives would look like; where we would travel, what we would do for a living. How it would feel to own an entire house, ours to decorate exactly the way we wanted. Her jaw would always be chattering like that. When she would arrive at pubs with Marc, to meet Scott and me, in the winter, her jaw would be working like that against the cold.
It’s not cold in the courtroom. She is condemned. That is how she looks.
‘And did it work? For Layla? Was she in the thirty to forty per cent?’
‘I don’t know,’ Irene says. ‘I never saw Layla again.’
Ellen sits down, triumphant, and I can barely look at her. The point-scoring of it. The games. The wordplay. The strutting theatre. Peacocks. It is despicable. Disgust rises up through me, unexpectedly, and I swallow, trying to dampen it down.
Harriet stands up and looks at the health visitor.
‘How many babies do you see with reflux, Ms Fox?’ she says icily.
‘How many babies …?’
‘Say, per year.’
‘Well – four times a day, maybe, it gets mentioned. Forty-six weeks per year, for me …’
Harriet looks at her notes. ‘So we’re talking, what, up to a thousand a year?’
‘Maybe – I really have no idea.’
‘I wonder how many health visitors there are in the UK,’ Harriet says.
Ellen turns her head and looks sharply at Harriet. Her mouth parts. Her brows draw together.
‘Just wondering,’ Harriet says. ‘Seems like quite a lot of refluxy babies.’ She brings her attention back to Irene. ‘So reflux is – I would say – all round pretty common.’
‘Common-ish. Yes. Maybe fifty per cent of babies have an episode of it.’
‘Fifty per cent!’ Harriet says, like she’s been handed a rare diamond.
Irene doesn’t care, I see. It’s not her baby. It’s not her sister. She is cool, up there on the stand, and has no opinion about my sister’s likely guilt or innocence. She hasn’t taken a side. She will leave the courtroom, after this. Head home and watch television, no demons in her living room, sitting over her shoulder in case she relaxes.
‘Right. So fifty per cent of babies are refluxy.’
‘Yes, at times.’
‘What would you say the outcome is – with these babies?’
‘The reflux passes,’ she says immediately.
‘They are n
ot killed. Thank you,’ she says.
‘If I may …’ Ellen says, rising to her feet.
The judge doesn’t even say anything. He merely looks at Harriet, exasperated.
‘Nothing further,’ she says. ‘Withdrawn.’
We break for lunch. It’s all so civilized, like we are playing cricket or at a training course, not like we are watching a trial play out in front of us.
The door creaks behind Ethan and me as we make our way across the hall and out into the sunshine. Mum, Dad and Scott are just in front of us. Mum’s body language is hunched. Perhaps she, too, is thinking of Layla, in pain in her final weeks.
Ethan looks at me over his menu in the café we end up in. He doesn’t say anything for a second, but I can tell he wants to. ‘Now it’s started,’ he says tentatively. ‘I just feel so sure she’s innocent.’
I shrug, not wanting to discuss it. I have nothing – and everything – to say on the subject, but I’m exhausted. ‘Who knows,’ I say.
‘But if she is …’ he continues.
‘Hmm?’
‘Imagine if she’s totally innocent.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then she’s wrongly accused. And hardly anybody believes her.’
I gulp. I can’t imagine. ‘You do,’ I say instead. It is easier to be prickly, to be spiteful, than it is to be nice, for the first time in my life.
How did we get here?
I gaze down at the menu, not pondering what to eat, not really here at all. Instead, I am back in July last year.
I was seven and a half months pregnant when it happened. When I did it. The most significant event leading up to Layla’s death. It was late one night. I couldn’t sleep, was too uncomfortable, and was idling on the internet.
I had three internet tabs open; two for grants of a couple of thousand pounds, and one for much more: the National Lottery’s charity page. I wanted to show Scott that I had used his money well. That it had been worthwhile. That we were helping people – together.
I would just fill in the charity details, I thought.
On the next page I had to fill in the financial information. It was dark in the spare room, just the glow of the monitor, and the cursor was blinking, the only movement in the still summer night. I knew the sea was rolling outside, but I couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it through the triple glazing. I reached to open the window, my bump pushing against the desk as I did so. I reached and stroked it, instinctively; the first time I had done so.
Ambivalence, we kindly called it. The broodiness didn’t hit in the way I thought it might. But one morning, the day before my thirtieth birthday, I was baking, and carried a sugar bag on my hip from the pantry to the kitchen. That was the first time I felt it. A solid presence in my arms. How nice it might be to look after a baby, a child. The rest of the leaps came easily. ‘Why not?’ we said. And then, the sex: so easy to have unprotected sex. So unconnected with the decision-making, it seemed to us. The pregnancy test. And here we were, and I was stroking my bump for the first time, like: Hello to you.
It was partly the bump grazing against the desk that made me fill in the rest of the form. A real and tangible touching. That touch. My baby. It brought to mind the large brown eyes of the children in Kos who queued up from sunrise to come to Stop Gap for the day; to get a meal, to talk to someone, but mostly just to play. At home, they never played; they had adult concerns. Finding food. Being quiet in the refugee camp. At Stop Gap, they could play – and be as loud as they liked. That was what they were queuing for, I thought.
I rubbed my taut bump and reread the information, then clicked: Next. A personal statement. And then all of the children were my bumps, too. Bana, whose hair had lightened in the sun. Moonif, with the scar across his forehead that he wouldn’t talk about. Amena, with the dirty koala toy. The queuing. Their disappointment.
I looked at the blinking cursor, as regular as the heartbeat inside me, and began to write.
15
Becky
Late afternoon, Friday 20 October
The reflux appointment has been all I have been able to think about, once I found out about it, as if it were a wrapped, pristine packet of cigarettes in my handbag waiting to be opened.
Even Marc, just now, texted me saying: It’s the day! Mind you, he’s nice like that.
I read the message a few times, thinking: How come you’re like this now?
I remember, a few weeks before we split up, I walked in the door, having been away on a hen do for the weekend. Xander was already in bed – sleeping, of course – and Marc was alone in the living room, a can of Carling on the arm of the sofa. ‘Alright?’ I said.
He didn’t reply, merely nodded. I took my shoes off, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t. Not a single question about my weekend, nor an offer of a drink for myself. Nothing. He didn’t even turn his head to look at me. Kept watching Match of the Day, his gaze fixed.
He had wanted to have sex with me the previous day, right before I left, but I’d said no. I needed to pack, get going. It had been ages, he’d said, but I ignored him. He’d been off ever since, not saying goodbye to me, and not saying hello, either. His temper was one thing, but his sulking was worse. Something had changed with him. Was it the pressure – the tedium – of parenthood, or was it something more? I never knew, and things unravelled soon after.
Now, almost a year post-separation, he sends texts like that. If he had been … if he was this nice then, what would have happened? My heart answers before my brain can stop it, and I close my eyes with the pain of it.
I reply to him, now: Thank you – hope it goes well.
Me too, he responds immediately. But then he adds: This has gone beyond a joke now.
The arrangement. I know he means the arrangement. I wrinkle my nose in distaste and put my phone away. Before Marc withdrew completely, he developed this curious, macho attitude to life that reared its head at times when Xander was little. He would say things like ‘They need sorting out,’ and ‘He’s got it coming to him.’ Sometimes he would snatch noisy toys from Xander, and slam doors, and bang saucepans around in the kitchen as he cooked. I could never reason with him when he was like that. It worried Xander, I know it did. But they never lasted long, his moods. He always snapped out of them. And he’d snap out of this, too; this disapproval of the nannying arrangement. Or so I hoped.
The health visitor will sort Layla out, and then we will be alright. She won’t cry so much, won’t be angry and tearful when Martha gets home.
It is late in the afternoon when we go for the appointment. It is almost getting dark, and I perch in the window of a lit-up café nearby. I can’t go in. It feels like too much hangs on it. My hands feel clammy with nerves. Because … if they can’t sort it. Then what?
I sip my overpriced flat white and glumly watch the people walk by outside. A man with a poodle, both cowering a little against the wind. Perhaps it won’t always be this way. Soon, one day soon, I won’t be looking after my sister’s baby who cries all the time. I could get a loan. Go back to design school. Finally finish. Become more like Martha: achieve something, instead of languishing in mediocrity. I don’t want a big, flashy life. Somehow, being with Marc taught me about smaller pleasures – watching The X Factor with a Chinese takeaway, a drive-through McDonald’s on a Sunday night – and I have no desire to become a high flyer, a traveller, a big shot. I just want life to be a little better. A little easier. To make money doing something I enjoy.
Marc’s right about the arrangement, even if he expresses it poorly. Something needs to change. I know it. Martha has taken advantage of me, and why shouldn’t she? I am a shadow of her, a pale imitation.
The door opens, letting in a blast of smoked autumn air, and I am immediately transported somewhere nostalgic, though I’m not sure where.
Martha and Layla emerge in the doorway, behind a woman in a polka-dot mackintosh. Layla is strapped to her mother’s chest, and is crying. My jaw sets.
‘H
ow’d you go?’ I say.
‘Oh, rubbish,’ Martha says. ‘Last time we got Gaviscon. Now we have ranitidine.’
‘I still can’t believe they prescribed Gaviscon,’ I say. What next? A prescription for Hall’s Soothers? Homeopathy? Probably.
‘What does ranitidine do?’ I say.
‘It stops the production of stomach acid. Same as Gaviscon, but more powerful. To be honest,’ Martha says, digging in the changing bag for the prescription, ‘it sounds like it’s just one of those things.’ She shows it to me. Ranitidine. Three times a day.
‘One of those things?’
‘She’ll just – grow out of it. I already think it’s a bit better. Don’t you?’
The shock must show on my face because Martha steps back, covering Layla’s head with her hand.
‘God. Maybe,’ I say, covering it up. Though I mean: Are you deluded?
We leave the café and Martha’s hair blows across her face in the cold air. We have the same hair, so much of it, brownish red. We don’t know where we got it from. Our parents both have thin hair, wispy, and here we are with massive manes that required special hairbrushes ordered from a catalogue by Mum. Dad used to clear all the hair that clogged up the drains when we were growing up. He never said a word about it until I saw him doing it one day and he admitted he did it every Monday. That was his way: stoicism. Ethan has inherited it.
‘How long until the drugs work?’ I say.
Layla’s whimpers become louder as we walk across the car park, and Martha reaches around for her hand.
I can’t get in the car with the crying. I can’t bear it. But how can I tell Martha that? Actually, this arrangement isn’t good for me. I can’t stand it any longer. I can’t, can I?
‘Feckless, unreliable Becky,’ Martha will say to Scott, and then they will roll their eyes about me. Their staff, gone rogue.
No. I can’t have that happen. I will make it work: I am too proud.
‘Up to a year.’
‘Wow.’
‘I know. But you’re so great with it. And think of next year, and how easy it’ll be,’ she says with a wide smile. And then, as if she is trying to make things seem better, she says, ‘It’ll either work or it’ll pass.’
No Further Questions Page 9
