Picture of Innocence. TJ Stimson

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СКАЧАТЬ to step into the bathroom for a moment to tidy up?’

      ‘You’re leaking,’ Lucas murmured.

      She glanced down. The entire front of her T-shirt and fleece were soaked with breast milk.

      The counsellor led her to a small en suite bathroom at the back of the room and shut the door behind them. Maddie stood mutely as the older woman unzipped her fleece and gently pulled her soaked T-shirt over her head as if she were a child. It was like her body was crying, the milk running down her skin in an unstoppable flood of tears.

      ‘Here, love, use this towel,’ Jessica said, as Maddie unhooked her sodden maternity bra. ‘I’m going to find you a clean T-shirt and bra from our donations box. Would you like me to see if I can find you a breast pump, so you can express a bit, just to tide you over?’

      Maddie nodded. When Jessica slipped discreetly out of the room, Maddie sank onto the closed lavatory seat, pressing the towel against her chest. What was she supposed to do with all this milk now? You couldn’t just stop breastfeeding overnight. When Jacob had been nine months old, he suddenly refused to nurse and she’d ended up with mastitis. It’d been agony. Emily had been so much easier. She’d been able to wean her gradually, tapering the number of her feeds over a period of weeks. She’d have to do the same now, she supposed, expressing just enough milk to keep from getting engorged, until her milk flow dried up naturally. She realised with a nauseating sense of horror she’d effectively be weaning a dead baby.

      The counsellor returned a few minutes later with the promised clothes and a hand-held plastic breast pump. ‘If you’re wondering what to do with it, there’s a milk bank here at the hospital,’ she said gently, as if she’d read Maddie’s mind. ‘They use it for premature babies in the NICU. You could donate your milk, if you wanted. It wouldn’t be wasted.’

      Maddie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The idea of expressing milk for a dead child was more than she could bear.

      Jessica left her alone in the bathroom and she pumped off just enough to relieve the fiery heat in her breasts. When she was done, she put on the bra and plain white T-shirt Jessica had found for her and returned to the grief room. Another man had joined the doctor and Lucas while she’d been gone. She knew immediately he was a policeman, despite the raincoat he’d tactfully buttoned up to hide his uniform.

      ‘PC Tudhope is going to sit in, so we don’t have to go through the same questions again later,’ Lucas said.

      ‘It’s just a formality,’ the constable added quickly. ‘Please, it’s not my intention to intrude on your grief or suggest any wrongdoing on your part at all.’

      ‘It’s fine,’ Maddie said dully.

      ‘Mr Drummond has explained that he was away for work until this morning,’ the doctor said, picking up his file again. ‘So perhaps you could start by saying how Noah seemed to you yesterday?’

      ‘He seemed fine,’ she said helplessly.

      ‘Was he eating normally? Did he show any signs of distress at all? Did you notice if he had a temperature?’

      ‘His temperature was normal. I know, because I checked it twice. Emily and Jacob – our other two children – they both have chickenpox, so I thought he might get sick, but he didn’t have a fever and he took all his normal feeds. He seemed fine,’ she said again.

      The doctor looked up from his notes. ‘Your other children have chickenpox?’

      ‘Emily came down with it a few days ago, and then Jacob the day before yesterday. Why? Is that what—’

      ‘We can’t rule anything out at this stage,’ the doctor said, gently cutting her off. ‘So, what time did he go down for the night?’

      ‘His last feed was around ten. He doesn’t usually settle properly after it, because he has colic. I’ll put him down, but he doesn’t really sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. He cries for hours, sometimes. Nothing seems to help.’ She glanced at Lucas as if for confirmation, and he took her hand and squeezed it. ‘We’ve tried everything: colic tablets, gripe water, rubbing his back, a warm hot-water bottle on his tummy, massage, everything. I’ve even tried changing my diet and cutting out dairy and anything spicy, in case it’s something in my milk upsetting him. I asked my doctor if it might be my antidepressants, but he said they wouldn’t affect it. The only thing that seems to help Noah is walking up and down the corridor with him. You can’t even sit down, or he starts crying again.’

      It suddenly occurred to her she was still speaking about her son in the present tense. But she didn’t have to worry about Noah crying anymore. Nothing would ever upset him again.

      The policeman’s expression sharpened. ‘You’re on antidepressants, Mrs Drummond?’

      ‘I had postnatal depression after Jacob,’ she said, wondering if he would judge her for it. ‘I’ve been on them ever since.’

      ‘My wife hasn’t had a depressive episode in nearly two years,’ Lucas interjected quickly.

      The doctor made a notation on his pad. ‘Was Noah’s colic worse than usual last night?’ he asked.

      ‘No!’ Maddie exclaimed. ‘That’s the thing! He didn’t have colic! He didn’t cry at all!’

      ‘Did you think that odd?’

      ‘I thought maybe he’d finally outgrown it. Doctors call it hundred-day colic, don’t they?’ she asked desperately. ‘He’s not quite ten weeks old, but I thought maybe he was growing out of it a week or two early, like Jacob did. I didn’t go in to check on him because I didn’t want to wake him. Jacob’s colic was never as bad as Noah’s, but—’

      ‘You didn’t check on him?’ Lucas interrupted. ‘All night?’

      Maddie hesitated. How could she admit she hadn’t checked on their son because she’d been worried sick about why her husband had borrowed some money without telling her? How utterly trivial and unimportant it seemed now. ‘I was just so grateful he’d stopped crying, I didn’t even think why,’ she said wretchedly.

      ‘In most cases like this, there’s nothing you could have done even if you’d checked him every ten minutes,’ the doctor said gently. ‘I know it’s easy for me to say, but please don’t blame yourself.’

      The constable leaned forward. ‘Mrs Drummond, just so I can be absolutely sure of the timeline: you put him to bed around ten last night, and he seemed perfectly fine, everything normal. And then you didn’t look in on him again until this morning, at around seven-thirty, when you found him?’

      It didn’t matter how nicely they said it. She hadn’t bothered to see if her baby was all right because she’d been too thankful he wasn’t crying. All that time she’d been praying he wouldn’t wake up, he’d been lying in his cot, cold and dead.

      ‘I didn’t set my alarm, because Noah usually wakes me long before I need to get up,’ she said, anguished. ‘As soon as I woke up, I went to check on him, but—’

      ‘No one’s blaming you,’ the doctor said again.

      ‘You were the one looking after the children yesterday? They weren’t with a childminder or relative?’ the constable asked.

      ‘No, СКАЧАТЬ