Forget Me Not (7 page)

‘Rose?’

A woman’s voice, far away, disturbs my reverie.

‘Rose?’ The voice is louder, closer.

I look down and I see I’m holding a bottle of breast milk in my hand. I’m standing in front of a small fridge. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

‘Are you all right?’

Amanda, a young nurse from New Zealand, is standing beside me. She’s one of the nurses I most enjoy working with. When I was managing the ward and she was on duty, I could relax. I didn’t have to watch her, or stay alert for errors, the way I did with some of the others. Amanda is kind. There is a link, I believe: those nurses who are careless with the babies, who handle them a little roughly or laugh too loud over their cots, those are the ones that make careless mistakes. Amanda is not one of those.

‘I drifted off,’ I say. ‘I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here.’

This has never happened to me on the ward. Up until now, I’ve been in control here at work. Amanda is looking at the bottle in my hand. I can see she’s worried.

‘Do you need help with something?’ I say.

The staff still come to me for advice, they’re used to me being in charge. I’ve been here such a long time. Forever.

‘Aren’t you looking after the Jones baby today?’ Amanda says.

I nod. She points at the milk bottle. ‘I think you’ve grabbed the wrong bottle there.’

I look down. The handwriting on the bottle is blurred. I hold it further away from my face until I can make out the label, which says
James
. The two bottles of milk must have been side by side, and distracted by DS Cole’s questions, I’ve picked up the wrong one.

‘Let me help you out there,’ Amanda says. She takes the bottle from me and places it back inside the fridge. She finds the one I need and hands it to me.

‘Thank you.’

She’s saved me. If I’d given the wrong milk to a baby and my mistake had been discovered, either by me or by the parents, there would have been drama. And panic and HIV testing and a vulnerable baby at risk. There would have been a complaint.

‘I’m going home,’ I say. ‘Can you ask Wendy to get cover for me?’

‘Of course. No worries. Go home and rest.’

Amanda is blonde and full of curves; it’s like looking at the opposite of my daughter. I place the bottle of milk back in her competent hands and leave the room.

As I make my way down the corridor, I feel myself dipping and sinking, my head slipping underwater, as though there are waves beneath my shoes instead of blue linoleum. The chaos and the confusion and the breaking apart have found me here. I suppose it was only a matter of time.

Forty minutes later I step out of the side entrance to the hospital and into the wet and miserable afternoon. Isaac is waiting for me.

‘Thank you for coming to get me,’ I say.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘I’m not sure.’

My cashmere coat is wrapped tight around me but it cannot ward off the cold. The paving stones are slippery after the rain and I stumble slightly. Isaac reaches out, takes hold of my arm and steadies me for a brief moment. I look around, as though DS Cole might be lurking somewhere, following me, camouflaged between the grey skies and the grey pavement.

The car is parked a street away. I’m worn out, as though fatigue has burrowed right down inside my bones, and I’m grateful Isaac is beside me. I couldn’t bear the bus, not today, couldn’t bear to sit amongst all those poor and exhausted people. Stop. Start. Stop. An interminable journey ending at an empty flat. I am one of them. Poor. Exhausted. Alone.

When we reach Vivien’s car, Isaac opens the passenger door for me and waits while I climb in. The car is spotless. I wonder if he has removed all traces of Vivien, or if there are still remnants, bits of her life secreted in the crevices between the seats, down the sides of the doors, tucked away inside the glove compartment.

As I fasten my seatbelt, I’m sure I catch her scent, the scent of flowers, though I’m not sure if this is real or in my imagination.

Isaac gets in, closes the door with a soft whump, and starts the engine. This car purrs. Cocooned in the plush interior with Isaac, I feel a little better. I begin to revive.

‘DS Cole came to see me today,’ I say. ‘She turned up at the hospital, out of the blue.’

Isaac is checking his side mirror, pulling out into the traffic.

‘She asked about an argument between Ben and Vivien, the day before Vivien died. She told me that Ben didn’t spend the night at home.’

I turn in my seat, so my body is angled towards his. But Isaac looks straight ahead, and he gives nothing away. He stays silent, his profile inscrutable.

‘Isaac, did you know Ben walked out on her the night before she died?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I knew. But it wasn’t my place to pry, and I didn’t ask questions.’

We’re making slow progress, edging our way onto the flyover.

‘Ben called me and told me where he was staying,’ Isaac says. ‘He asked me to go past the house, to check everything was all right. Vivien had really shafted him by calling off the dinner; those people were critical investors. He needed some time on his own, but he was planning to go home the next day.’

‘Was everything all right, when you went past the house?’

‘As far as I could tell. When Vivien came to the front door she was calmer than I expected, she didn’t seem that upset.’ Finally, he glances over at me. ‘She didn’t invite me in. She asked me not to press the buzzer again because she didn’t want the noise to wake Alexandra. She said she’d just managed to get her to bed. In hindsight, I wish I’d stayed for a while. Or persuaded Ben to go home.’

‘In hindsight we’d all do things differently,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything.’

‘I have no idea what the argument was about,’ he says. ‘I’d dropped Vivien off at the jeweller’s earlier that day and they seemed happy to see each other. They were holding hands.’

‘Did he leave her alone like that often?’

‘I don’t know. I doubt it. That was the only time he’s ever asked me to drive past to check on the house at night.’

He looks sideways at me again and his eyes linger on my face a moment before turning back to the road. His left hand rests on the handbrake, inches from my thigh. His fingernails are neatly trimmed and clean.

‘They were married a long time, Rose. All married couples argue. And if it’s any consolation, there was more affection between them than most other couples I’ve seen.’

‘That’s exactly what I told DS Cole.’

The smell of flowers has faded, now all I’m aware of is the subtle, masculine scent of Isaac’s aftershave.

‘Did you know Ben’s ex-girlfriend has been visiting him? I bumped into her the other night outside the house. Her name is Cleo Baker.’

Isaac nods. ‘I gathered.’

‘Had you seen him with her, before Vivien died?’

‘No.’

I stare at Isaac’s profile. He doesn’t show much of a reaction to what I’ve said. His calm demeanour, his inscrutability, which up until now I’ve found a comfort, is beginning to irritate me. I get the impression Isaac’s first priority is his loyalty to Ben, and that he’d rather protect Ben than tell me the truth.

‘I was wondering if Cleo might have been the cause of their argument.’

‘Rose, I really have no idea. I wouldn’t think so, but I really don’t know.’

I keep my eyes straight ahead of me, on the road, on the back of the black cab in front of us as we crawl down Wellington Road.

‘Do you think the police are allowed to just turn up like DS Cole did this morning,’ I say, ‘whenever and wherever they like?’

‘I suppose they are,’ Isaac says.

‘I don’t want to say anything stupid. I don’t want to give them any sort of ammunition if they’ve decided to dig into Vivien and Ben’s relationship.’

‘Ben doesn’t need you to protect him,’ Isaac says. His eyes are back on the road, both hands on the wheel. ‘We were out in Surrey together that morning, on a site survey. He’s not a focus of the investigation.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘But whenever I’m with DS Cole, I feel guilty. As though she’s accusing me of something, even though she doesn’t articulate it.’

‘Everyone feels that way when they’re being interviewed by a police officer. I had quite a grilling myself since I was the one who found her.’

Isaac clears his throat and then he falls silent. He looks across at me, only briefly. I sense he wants to say more. He is waiting for me to ask, to give him permission to continue. But I am not ready to know.

I turn to look out of my tinted window. London is so clogged up with traffic. I worry about Lexi growing up here; no fresh air, no respite.

‘I didn’t tell you the whole story at dinner the other night,’ I say. ‘When I said I brought up my daughter alone, perhaps I gave you the wrong impression, as though I was some kind of saintly, self-sacrificing single mother. I wasn’t. That’s part of my guilt.’

I hear myself sigh. I have such a strong urge to confess, for someone else to know my burden.

‘I fell pregnant with Vivien by mistake. I was in the final year of my basic nursing training and the timing could not have been worse. I’d been offered a place on a specialist training course and I was desperate to take it up. The training would mean I could carry out many of the same procedures as a neonatal paediatrician does – inserting cannulas, intubating the babies, that sort of thing. But the course was in Southampton and it would have been impossible with a baby to look after. My mother said she would support me. I think she was quite excited, even, about having a baby in her house. My father died of a heart attack when he was in his thirties, and she was lonely. So I ended up sending Vivien to live with my mother when she was three months old, and I went to Southampton as planned. Vivien stayed with my mum until she was four. She was more of a mother than I was.’

It’s a relief to say this out loud.

‘I paid a price for those lost years. We both did. Vivien came back to live with me when she was starting school but even then she spent more time at the childminder’s than she did with me. I was lucky because Jane – the childminder – was an amazing woman. I felt she was doing a better job than I was anyway, and she was happy to have Vivien to stay overnight if I was working a night shift. In the end, I didn’t even have Vivien with me for that long. She was really gifted at ballet, and when she was sixteen, she asked if I’d send her to ballet school, as a boarder. And once again I was relieved. It wasn’t easy running a neonatal unit and dealing with a teenage daughter.’

I roll down my window, I want to breathe in some fresh, cold air. Instead I taste the bitterness of this polluted city. Isaac is concentrating on the oncoming traffic as he pulls into the lay-by outside Cambridge Court. It’s almost dark.

I close the window and look at my bruised hand as it rests on soft pink cashmere. Isaac turns off the engine, and we sit for a few moments without speaking. Then he reaches over and places his hand over mine.

‘I was not a good mother,’ I say. ‘I was just going through the motions, and I never found it particularly rewarding. I had to bring up my daughter alone, in a damp-infested council flat. I gave up any social life I might have had. But more than that – I love my job and I always found being on the ward much more enjoyable than being at home. I often thought it would have been better for me not to have gone through with the pregnancy. And now that she’s died, it feels like my fault. I feel so guilty. As though I’m responsible because I wished her away.’

Isaac squeezes my hand. He doesn’t try to make me feel better, or to deny this horrible, irreversible truth.

‘There’s only one way I can redeem myself,’ I say. ‘And that’s to watch over Lexi.’

I feel he understands me. His hand is warm over mine, his eyes are kind and wise. Or perhaps I’m imagining what I want to see; conjuring up the kind of friend I need.

I unlock the front door of Cambridge Court and Isaac follows me into the lobby and waits by my side for the lift to arrive. Once inside, under the bright light, we stand with our backs against the mirror, staring straight ahead.

I stop at the threshold of my flat, holding my keys. Isaac is next to me, his hands tucked into the pockets of his long coat. I wonder if he notices the smell that bothers me so. The sourness of Vivien’s childhood.

‘I had a word with Ben,’ Isaac says. ‘He’s not comfortable with you fetching Alexandra from school. Not yet. He’s trying to keep her routine as much the same as possible, and he thinks it will be too disruptive to have a different person pick her up.’

I turn and brace my back against my front door, stiffening my spine against the surge of disappointment. ‘What if I come over to the house, to meet her when she gets home?’

‘It’s too soon, that’s all.’ Isaac looks embarrassed.

‘I imagine Ben had a few choice words to say about me.’

Isaac says nothing. There is a scuffling from underneath the door across the hall. We’ve disturbed Mrs Shenkar’s two Pomeranians. My neighbour is morbidly obese and she is always home, usually in her dressing gown. Sometimes she’ll open her door and peer out.

‘I can help Lexi,’ I say. ‘I should be seeing her every day. This is cruel. Ben is punishing both of us. I know I’ve screwed up, but does it count for nothing that I’ve lost my daughter?’

A knife-sharp pain rips through my temple, and lodges behind my right eye. The dogs across the hall launch into a high-pitched yapping as they hear the distress in my raised voice.

I cover my face with my hands.

‘Let me finish,’ Isaac says. ‘It’s not all bad news.’ Gently, he pulls my hands away from my face. He keeps hold of me.

‘Ben wants to take Alexandra to the funfair on the South Bank on Saturday,’ he says. ‘He’s asked me to drive them over there. I suggested we should ask you to come with us, and Ben said that would be fine.’

‘So I have to wait until the weekend?’

I sound churlish and ungrateful, but I resent the fact that I’m reliant on this near stranger, benign as he may be, for access to my own granddaughter. Isaac knows nothing of the days, the weeks, I spent sitting next to Lexi’s incubator. I was the one who stayed with her during the gruesome eye-testing, to make sure the ventilator hadn’t damaged her vision. Ben and Vivien couldn’t bear to see her suffer.