by Delaney, JP
So I will try. I will hum along and study the score, and perhaps one day I will hear it—properly hear it, the way my partner does.
And yet, and yet…It’s struck me there’s still a small gap in Lucy’s account of how Theo and David got switched. Effectively, she said she’d gone along with Paula’s mistake. But how had Paula come to make such a mistake in the first place? She might be brusque, but she’s a very competent nurse. Is it possible someone had already changed the mobile incubators around, or positioned them in such a way that a nurse might reasonably take the wrong one?
But then I glance over at Pete, so lean and handsome in his wet suit, and think how ridiculous that is.
He’s crouching down now, showing Theo how to smack the surface of David’s rock pool gently, making the ripples catch the sunlight so David will laugh. Theo’s getting the hang of it; and, what’s more, is actually resisting the urge to jump in and make the water explode all over David’s face. It looks as if he might even be enjoying making David chortle.
At the end of the day, I decide, you have to let suspicion go, to trust those you love. To do otherwise is to walk in Miles’s shoes, and who would want to live that way?
Although it’s good to know that, if it ever becomes necessary again, I can wear those shoes for a time. To protect my family.
I look again at Pete. Sometime on this holiday, I think, I’ll ask Lucy to mind Theo for a while. Pete and I will go for a walk, up on this beautiful headland. Perhaps it will be just as the sun is setting, a golden yolk bursting into the sea. And there on the cliffs, with the wind twisting our hair into crazy shapes and the spray salty on our lips, we’ll start a conversation about marriage.
Acknowledgments
WRITERS ARE OFTEN ASKED WHERE they get their ideas, one of the hardest questions to answer. I don’t know what first prompted me to write about swapped babies—although it was, of course, one of the great staples of the Victorian “sensation novel”—but during the writing process I did come to see that the plot was heavily influenced by what was happening in the political world at the time. I wanted, I realized, to write about two ordinary people who try to resolve a near-impossible situation through dialogue and compromise—and when that doesn’t work, face the challenge of deciding at what point dialogue and compromise become futile. Hopefully, by the time you’re reading this the world has become a more settled place, and that particular aspect of the story has less resonance.
Many people helped with the research for this book. In particular I’d like to thank N, a consultant neonatologist whose hospital trust have asked that she remain anonymous (she has no connection with the hospital in the location the fictional St. Alexander’s roughly occupies, or with my fictitious private maternity hospitals), solicitor Monica Rai and His Honour Judge Peter Devlin for their guidance on matters of family law, and consultant psychiatrist Dr. Emma Fergusson for allowing me to pick her brains on everything from postpartum psychosis to high-functioning psychopathy. The errors and liberties that remain in these areas are of course entirely my responsibility.
I’d also like to say a special thank-you to Tobias Jacob Hadi, for allowing me to refresh my memory of what a two-year-old is like, and to his mum, Carolina Walker, for agreeing to what must surely be one of the oddest requests a mother can receive from a total stranger. I should point out, too, that CAFCASS are by no means as difficult as my fictional social worker might imply: For every horror story (and there are a few) there are many stories of empathy and caring by their officers in the most difficult of circumstances.
My thanks to my publishers at Ballantine, and particularly Kara Welsh, Denise Cronin, and Rachel Kind for falling in love with the initial pitch; Stef Bierwerth and all the team at Quercus for believing in it as soon as they heard about it; and Caradoc King, Millie Hoskins, and Kat Aitkin for being such fantastic first readers. Anne Speyer, my editor, made this story so much better, not just once but again and again—thank you.
Finally, it seems appropriate to dedicate a book so focused on family and parenting to my children: Tom, Harry, Ollie, and the memory of Nicholas. In the evocative words of the Old Testament, my bowels yearn upon you all.
BY JP DELANEY
The Girl Before
Believe Me
The Perfect Wife
Playing Nice
About the Author
The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Before, Believe Me, and The Perfect Wife, JP DELANEY has previously written bestselling fiction under other names.
jpdelaney.co.uk
Facebook.com/JPDelaneywriter
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