Hope to Die

‘Miss Rowan bonded well with her baby, and expressed no interest in having him adopted.’ That’s from Ms Rowan’s hospital records, entered and signed by you on the morning after she discharged herself. Do you remember writing that?

AT: Yes, I do. But it wasn’t true. She didn’t bond with him at all.

AF: Enough to worry you – as a professional?

AT: Yes.

AF: But you didn’t raise this with anyone else at the hospital – you can’t have done – there’s nothing in the records.

AT: It was different back then – people weren’t so quick to rush to judgement. And like I said, it was my first job – I wanted to be sure – to watch her for a little longer before I did anything. She’d only given birth a few hours before she discharged herself – I had no idea she would leave hospital so quickly.

AF: On the afternoon of 23rd December. When the baby was only a few hours old.

AT: Yes.

AF: And yet the following morning you made an entry in her records saying all was well, when you clearly had significant cause for concern. Not only that, by not raising those concerns, you could actually put the child at more risk. Why on earth would you do that?

AT: [silence]

AF: Ms Toms?

* * *

23 December 1997, 2.45 p.m.

Birmingham and Solihull General Hospital

She’d popped down to the shops to buy a sandwich and stopped off to collect her dry cleaning on the way. There was a queue – four women ahead of her collecting party dresses they probably hadn’t worn since last Christmas – so she ended up being ten minutes late getting back. She thought a lot about that, afterwards. Those ten minutes. Because if she hadn’t had to wait, she’d never have seen. Nothing would have happened. Not to her, at any rate. It might have been months before the news broke. Years even. And by then she’d have forgotten – by then it would have been nothing to do with her.

But it didn’t happen that way. Alison was late, and she saw, and her life was never the same again.

Though it took her a while to realize what exactly it was that she was seeing.

When she first pulled up in the car park she didn’t even notice her. It was only when she released the seat belt and turned for the door handle that she realized Camilla Rowan was walking towards her, a handbag over one shoulder, the baby held against the other, wrapped in a hospital blanket. She was confused for a moment, wondering if the girl was heading in her direction, but then she stopped by a black VW Golf two cars over. But that didn’t make any sense – Rowan couldn’t be actually leaving – it was way too soon. OK, Rowan was young and healthy, but as far as Alison knew, the baby hadn’t even had its heel-prick test, and Rowan still hadn’t managed to breastfeed him, wasn’t even holding him properly – you only had to look at her now –

Alison was about to get out of the car, but hesitated – she wasn’t exactly sure what authority she had, and perhaps she was being a bit too judgemental. Maybe Rowan was meeting someone – her parents or her boyfriend: none of them had been in yet. Perhaps they’d come to see her and brought some things for the baby.

But when the young woman unlocked the car door and yanked it open it was obvious there was no one else there. She was alone, and she was leaving.

Alison watched as she threw her handbag on to the passenger seat and then opened the back and bent over the rear seat. It was impossible to see exactly what she was doing but it didn’t take long – a mere two or three seconds later she straightened up again and swung the door shut. Alison grabbed at her own car door and started to get out of her car – she couldn’t possibly have strapped the baby in correctly in that time – was there even a proper car seat in there? But it was too late – the Golf had already started and was beginning to reverse.

She had no choice.

That’s what she told herself, afterwards.

She had no choice.

* * *

AF: You followed her.

AT: Yes.

AF: You didn’t think to alert someone? Flag her down?

AT: How could I alert anyone? I didn’t have a mobile phone – no one did, back then. And she was driving fast – it was all I could do not to lose her.

AF: So you followed her – where to exactly?

AT: She got on to the M5, going south.

AF: And then?

AT: She came off at Brockworth and headed towards Cirencester. On the A417.

* * *

As far as Puttergill is concerned, Barnetson should be looking pretty chuffed right now, seeing as it looks like he’s cracked it. But he just looks grim.

‘I should have thought of this before,’ he mutters, staring down into the open manhole. ‘It was odds-on they weren’t on the mains, not all the way out here.’

‘Well, to be fair, this one ain’t that easy to find,’ says the lorry driver. ‘Not if you don’t already know. Most of the time I come it’s covered in leaves and crap.’