Little Face

by Sophie Hannah

  David and I eavesdropped through the plastic hospital curtain that separated our quarter of the ward from the other three, and could hardly believe our ears when we found out that the reason he was so set on Chloe was because he already had a daughter by that name from a previous relationship. Mandy kept trying and failing to convince him that this was a reason against, not in favour.

  I decided that she needed the hypericum more than I did, and gave it to her after the horrible boyfriend had gone home one night. She said thank you abruptly, as if no-one had ever been kind to her before and she considered it almost rude.

  David sits on the white sofa by the window, tapping his right foot on the floor. Every so often he inhales sharply and we all look at him, expecting him to speak. He doesn’t, though. He just shakes his head and closes his mouth. He cannot believe what is happening. After I gave my statement, he gave his. Soon Cheryl will give hers. It is as if we are all taking part in a bizarre cult ceremony.

  I would like to be able to say that, as Florence’s mother, my statement is worth any number of other people’s, but I fear that it isn’t. Simon wouldn’t let me say half of what I wanted to say. He kept telling me that it had to be a factual account. I was not allowed to use what he called flowery language. I was not allowed to begin any sentence with the words ‘I felt’, or to say that it was my suspicion that someone crept into the house and took Florence while David was napping. Apparently you can only include an opinion in a statement if it is a ‘Hobstaff’, whatever that might be. Simon tells me that this situation is not one.

  In the end, all I was permitted to say was that when I came home this afternoon after having been to Waterfront, I noticed that the front door was open, which was unusual, and then I went upstairs and observed that the baby in the cot was not my daughter, although superficially she looked like Florence.

  I will not speak again for the time being. I will not contradict David, whatever he says. What’s the point? It isn’t as if Simon believes me, and nothing I say or do is going to change anybody’s mind. I will save my next effort for when Vivienne arrives.

  ‘Mrs Dixon? I asked you when you last saw Florence?’

  Cheryl stands on the Persian rug in the middle of the room, peering into the Moses basket. Every few seconds she looks up at me anxiously. She is uncomfortable with my silence and wants me to say something to make her task easier. ‘I saw her on Tuesday this week. Three days ago.’

  ‘And is this the same baby that you saw then?’

  She squirms, wrinkles her forehead. I have to look away. I feel utterly drained. My brain has grown fuzzy around the edges, as if someone is trying to rub it out. I hug my knees tighter and steel myself for Cheryl’s response. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I’m really not sure. They change so much in the early days and I see so many babies, sometimes ten or twelve a day. I mean, if Alice is positive . . .’ She tails off.

  Shock, astonishment, surges through me. At last, somebody who is not one hundred per cent certain that I am wrong, someone who thinks I might actually be worth listening to. ‘Now will you do something?’ I beg.

  ‘Not sure? What does that mean? You can’t say that!’

  ‘Mr Fancourt, please.’ Simon’s voice is low, authoritative. ‘Mrs Dixon is here to help us. If you’re going to intimidate her, I’ll have to ask you to leave the room.’

  ‘It’s my house!’ David snaps.

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s Vivienne’s house, and she’s on her way back,’ I remind him. Suddenly it seems worth speaking again.

  ‘I’m really sorry I can’t be more definite,’ says Cheryl. ‘I just don’t have a clear memory of Florence’s face. And, as I say, they change so much in the early days, don’t they?’

  ‘They don’t change into different people,’ David bellows. He leaps up off the sofa. ‘This is preposterous. This is the most ludicrous thing that’s ever happened to me in my whole life. It’s Florence! It’s definitely her!’

  I feel sorry for him, but sorrier for myself, and, above all, for Florence. I used to think I had enough love and determination in me to help everyone who needed it equally. Not any more.

  ‘You’ve checked it’s a girl, then?’ says Cheryl. We stare at each other, mute and paralysed. Silence spreads through the room like sticky, black syrup. ‘You haven’t checked the sex of the baby?’ Cheryl asks Simon, who hardens his face at the perceived criticism.

  ‘He hasn’t checked because he doesn’t think there’s any need to,’ I tell her. ‘He doesn’t believe me.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’ David turns away in disgust. ‘Go on, take her nappy off. She’s due a change anyway. I can tell you exactly what nappy she’s wearing too – it’s a newborn size Pampers Baby Dry.’ And she has blue eyes and milk spots on her nose, and no hair, I wait for him to add.

  ‘All babies wear those,’ I say quietly. ‘David, that doesn’t prove anything. You had plenty of time to change her while I was talking to Simon in the kitchen.’

  ‘Simon?’ David looks at him, then at me. ‘So you two have got all pally, have you?’

  ‘You’re making this more unpleasant than it needs to be, Mr Fancourt.’

  Cheryl begins to unbutton the Bear Hug babygro. She does not ask for anybody’s permission.

  ‘Can’t you take her upstairs to change her?’ I say shakily. ‘She’s a baby, not a piece of evidence.’ My eyes and brain hurt, and the inside of my nose tingles with the constant effort of not crying. I cannot take much more.

  ‘Her!’ David pounces on the word.

  ‘She’s obviously a girl,’ I say.

  ‘See, you know it’s Florence.’ David jabs a finger at me. ‘You’ve gone mad, but deep down you know it’s Florence.’

  ‘Do I?’ I say vaguely. He sounds so certain. I look round the room, at each face in turn. Three big faces, one little face. ‘No. No, I don’t know that at all.’

  I leave the room, unable to watch as Florence’s Bear Hug babygro is removed. I wait outside the little lounge with my eyes closed for what feels like hours, pressing my forehead against the cool wallpaper in the hall. ‘It’s a girl,’ I hear Cheryl say eventually, shouting to make herself heard above the noise of outraged crying. I remember the last time I heard those words, at my twenty-week scan, and my knees buckle. It’s a girl. You’re going to have a daughter. But for how long will she be mine? – I didn’t think to ask. How long before someone takes her away from me, or me from her? Nobody said anything about that.

  ‘In a Pampers Baby Dry nappy,’ says David. ‘Now do you believe me?’

  ‘Put her clothes back on,’ I plead from the hall.

  ‘Alice, where’s her red book?’ Cheryl asks briskly. ‘It’s got all Florence’s details in it – weight, height, any birth-marks. Every baby has one,’ she tells Simon. ‘That’s one way to check the basics. I’ve got my scales in the car. I’ll go and get them.’

  ‘Her red book’s in her room,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ says David. ‘This should settle it once and for all.’

  I don’t see how. Babies gain and lose weight all the time, especially when they are very young. There is always height, I suppose. That is an area in which one would expect only an upward curve.

  David passes me in the hall and gives me a puzzled look, as if he’s not sure, but he thinks I might be somebody he once knew. I want to reach out to him, but it is already too late. We have both set off on our separate paths.

  ‘Right, little lady, you wait here,’ I hear Cheryl say. ‘There’s no point dressing you just to undress you again, is there? We’ll just wrap you in this nice blanket, keep you lovely and warm. No funny business, mind!’ Funny business is Cheryl’s cover-all term for bodily functions. Perhaps this is not the most difficult situation she has encountered in her professional life. She must have to deal with real tragedies sometimes. She knows how to be calm and practical even in the worst of circumstances. Please let this not be the start of a real tragedy, I pray, let it be only a temporar
y horror.

  David comes downstairs with the red book. This time he looks at me with utter contempt. I follow him into the lounge. ‘Florence was last weighed on Tuesday,’ I say. ‘She was eight pounds and thirteen ounces. That baby looks a bit heavier.’

  ‘“That baby”,’ David mutters. He has his back to the room and is staring out of the window. His voice sounds as if it’s coming from far away. When he turns, his face is pale with anger. ‘All right, then. All right. I didn’t want to have to do this, but you’ve asked for it. Are you going to tell Simon about your history of mental illness or shall I?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I say. ‘David, do you remember that woman from the hospital? Mandy?’

  ‘Alice was on Prozac for depression for nearly a year after her parents died. Also, and Cheryl will back me up on this, the night after Florence was born she claimed another baby was Florence, some random baby in the hospital.’

  I freeze. This is true, but I’d forgotten about it almost completely. It’s so stupid and irrelevant. I didn’t even know David knew about it. I certainly haven’t told him. One of the midwives must have, when he came to visit the next day.

  Cheryl appears in the doorway, carrying her scales. I can see from her face that she heard what David said. She looks at me unhappily. She doesn’t want to betray me, but her common sense is telling her that perhaps the incident is relevant, perhaps her belief in my sanity and trustworthiness has been a little rash.

  ‘I was exhausted,’ I explain. ‘I’d just had an emergency C-section after a three-day labour. I was so tired I was hallucinating, literally.’

  ‘You still are,’ says David. ‘Look where your hallucinations have got us.’

  ‘Cheryl offered to take Florence so that I could sleep, and I let her. Then I felt guilty. It should have been my first night with my little girl and I’d been only too glad to hand her over.’ I cannot stop the flow of tears as I tell this story. Part of me feared, that night, that I was the worst mother in the world. A good mother would surely cling to her precious baby twenty-four hours a day and make sure no harm came to her. ‘After ten minutes or so I was still awake, overtired and feeling guilty, missing Florence like mad, so I thought I might as well go and get her back. I buzzed for a midwife, and Cheryl came in a few seconds later holding a tiny baby. I . . . I thought it was Florence, but only because it was Cheryl who’d taken her away a few minutes earlier. I was almost out of my mind with tiredness. I hadn’t slept at all for three days!’

  ‘And as soon as I brought Florence into the room, she realised her mistake,’ says Cheryl. Thank God. She is still on my side. Simon knows this too, and he is inclined to take me more seriously because I have the tacit support of my midwife. Thank God for Cheryl.

  ‘Cheryl, do you remember Mandy?’ I ask.

  ‘Three days she was in agony,’ David tells Simon. ‘It wasn’t even proper labour, that’s what they said. They tried to induce her twice and failed. Even when they put her on a drip, it didn’t work. Nothing did. In the end they did an emergency Caesarian but the anaesthetic didn’t work properly. Did it?’ His eyes challenge me to deny it.

  I shake my head.

  ‘The pain was so bad she passed out. She missed the best bit, when they lifted Florence out. By the time she came round, it was all over. And the breast-feeding was a total failure too, Alice was devastated about that. She’d really wanted to feed Florence herself. Don’t you think all that’d be enough to traumatise anyone, Inspector? To bring on a sort of . . . I don’t know, post-natal madness?’

  I am too shocked by David’s account of Florence’s birth to say anything in my defence. He seems to know all the facts but none of the truth. Did he perceive it so negatively at the time? If so, he showed no sign of it.

  For the first time, I visualise his mind as a dangerous country, one I am afraid to enter. All these years I have waited for him to let me in, assuming that I knew or could imagine how the land lay. I pictured the anguish and insecurity that were the legacy of having grown up without a father, been separated from his son, suffered the trauma of Laura’s death. I attributed to him the thoughts and feelings that I would have had if I were him.

  ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ Simon sighs. ‘Let’s weigh the baby.’

  In my head, I start to write an alternative statement, one that is far truer than the thing I signed for Simon:

  My name is Alice and I love my daughter Florence more than life, more than all the best things in the world put together. Her full name is Florence Imogen Fancourt. She has a perfectly round head, hardly any hair, dark blue eyes and a tiny, perfect mouth like a little pink flower. Her fingers, toes and eyelashes are all surprisingly long. She smells clean and fresh, powdery and new. She has my dad’s ears. When I lean her over my hand to burp her, her round shoulders slump forward and she makes a funny throaty noise, as if she is trying to gargle. She has a way of tucking her hands and feet neatly together, daintily, like a ballet dancer, and she doesn’t cry in the random, anarchic way that some babies do. She cries like an angry grown-up with a serious grievance.

  ‘Nine pounds exactly.’

  ‘So? So? That proves nothing. She’s put on weight, that’s all. Babies do.’

  On Friday 12th September 2003, she was delivered by emergency Caesarian section at Culver Valley General Hospital. She weighed 7 pounds and 11 ounces. It was not a nightmare, as my husband says, but the happiest day of my life. As the doctors and midwives were wheeling me through from the delivery room to the operating theatre, I heard one of them shout to David, ‘Bring some clothes for the baby’. That was when it hit me that all this was real. I craned my neck and just managed to catch a glimpse of David ransacking my hospital bag. He pulled out a white bodysuit and a white babygro with little Pooh Bears and Tiggers all over it. ‘Pooh likes his honey, but Tigger thinks it’s funny’. Vivienne bought it. ‘A baby’s first outfit should be white,’ she said. I remember thinking to myself, my daughter is going to wear those clothes. Soon.

  ‘Have you contacted the hospital?’ says Cheryl. ‘There’s an outside chance they’ll still have the placenta and the umbilical cord. You could test whether they come from this baby. We’re supposed to dispose of them after two days, but, between you and me, it doesn’t always happen. You’d better get on to them quick, mind.’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake. This is a farce! Are you really going to . . .’

  As they pushed me into the operating theatre, a song by Cher was playing loudly, the one where her voice goes all wobbly. I instantly loved it, and knew that from now on it would remind me of my baby’s birth. It would be my song, mine and my child’s. The anaesthetist squirted blue gel on to my stomach. ‘This shouldn’t feel cold,’ he said.

  ‘That wouldn’t be too costly, I suppose, in terms of manpower and resources. Could take a while for the result to come through, though.’

  ‘See! He doesn’t want to get in trouble with his boss, for wasting public money on what’s obviously sheer lunacy.’

  ‘And the other women on the ward, this Mandy girl Alice mentioned.’

  ‘None of those women so much as gave Florence a second glance!’

  ‘Mr Fancourt, you’re not helping. Excuse me a minute, everybody.’

  It felt cold.

  10

  Entries from DC Simon Waterhouse’s Pocket Book

  (Written 3/10/03, 7 pm)

  27/9/03, 11 am

  Area: Spilling Police Station. Received a phone call from Alice Fancourt (see index). She said she needed to talk to me urgently because she had some new information pertaining to the matter of her allegation that her baby has been abducted and swapped for another baby (case no. NS1035–03–Q). I suggested that she should accompany her mother-in-law Mrs Vivienne Fancourt (see index) to the police station later today (Vivienne Fancourt has arranged to come in and give us her statement) and I said I would talk to her then. Mrs Fancourt started to cry and said she needed to talk to me alone, in private, away from both
her mother-in-law and her husband David Fancourt (see index). I consulted with my sergeant, DS 326 Charlotte Zailer, who authorised me to meet and talk to Mrs Fancourt. Mrs Fancourt suggested we meet at Chompers Café Bar in her health club, ‘Waterfront’ (Saltney Road, Spilling), at 1400 hours on Sunday 28 September. I told her that was impossible and suggested Monday 29th. Mrs Fancourt became agitated and said she didn’t think she could wait that long, but I told her I couldn’t see her sooner. I said the police station might be a more suitable venue than Chompers, but Mrs Fancourt insisted that she wanted to meet somewhere ‘less official and intimidating’.

  She then told me that Vivienne Fancourt was also a member of Waterfront, but that she never went to Chompers Café Bar because she thought it was ‘a hell-hole’. Just in case Vivienne Fancourt went to the health club on the same afternoon, Alice Fancourt said that I should not go in via the front door and the main lobby area, but rather I should enter the café bar through the door on Alder Street. That way, Mrs Fancourt was certain that, even if her mother-in-law was on the premises, she wouldn’t see me. I said that this sounded too complicated and again asked her to come to the police station. She refused, became hysterical, and said that if I didn’t meet her where she said, she wouldn’t give me the new information she had. She said that Chompers was the one place Vivienne Fancourt could be guaranteed not to go to because she ‘boycotts the place on principle’.

  I told Mrs Fancourt that I would seek my sergeant’s approval and that she should call me back in ten minutes. I then consulted DS Zailer and told her that I was worried about the unusual nature of Mrs Fancourt’s demands, but she said we should agree to her terms in order to obtain whatever new information she had. Mrs Fancourt phoned back four minutes later and we agreed to meet at Chompers Café Bar in the Waterfront Health Club complex at 1400 hours on Monday 29th September. Mrs Fancourt then said that if she wasn’t there by 1430 hours, I shouldn’t wait any longer. She said that she feared she might not be able to leave the house. She sounded frightened when she told me this, and said goodbye and hung up immediately afterwards.