Mummy’s Little Girl: A heart-rending story of abuse, innocence and the desperate race to save a lost child. Jane Elliott

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СКАЧАТЬ can come back here any time, bitch,’ he whispered. ‘But tell anyone and I’ll kill you. Understand?’

      Terrified, Hayley nodded her head.

      ‘Then get the fuck out of here.’

      Hayley fled.

      The sickness lasted for several hours, the discomfort in her belly for a few days; the shame endured for much longer than that. Hayley barely left her bedroom for the whole of the school holidays – she was too scared of seeing either the boys or the girl who had threatened her, and not even the prospect of a beating from her mum was enough to get her to leave the flat.

      Hayley was not a worldly girl, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew she had been raped that night, probably by both boys. She knew she should tell someone, but there was no one to tell, and anyway, she was scared. Scared of the boys who had done it to her, and scared of what people would think. Much better to forget about it. Pretend it had never happened. Put it from her mind.

      But that was not possible.

      When her period was late, she ignored the little voice that nagged inside her head. Hayley was only young, and far from regular; it was nothing to worry about. But a week passed, and then two. She started to feel sick. Of course, she kept it from her mum and dad. Mum especially always reacted badly when she said she felt unwell. She didn’t go to the doctor, and even if she had had the courage to walk into a pharmacy and ask for a pregnancy test, she had no money to buy one.

      And so the pregnancy progressed. Hayley knew she couldn’t keep it a secret for ever, but nine months was a long time. Maybe by the time the baby was born, something would have changed in her life.

      But it hadn’t been nine months. Only five, when once again she slipped out of the flat without her mum and dad knowing. The pains were happening every fifteen minutes, and when they came she felt like doubling over in agony. There was no way she would be able to hide this from her mum, so she had to get out of there.

      It was raining outside, a heavy, cold, persistent rain that saturated her clothes almost immediately. The sun had set, and there was no one outside in this weather – no one to see when Hayley bent over, clutching her belly and crying out. She staggered out of the estate and on to the main road that ran alongside it. There were few pedestrians here, but plenty of cars and buses, their headlamps on as they splashed their way through the rain.

      If any of them saw the fifteen-year-old girl, stumbling along the puddle-ridden pavement with a look of unabated agony on her face, they didn’t stop to help.

      Charity Thomson took the lift down from the maternity ward and walked through the clattering corridors of the hospital to the café by the entrance on the ground floor. She could get coffee on the ward, of course, but sometimes you just had to get out of there, away from the stress and the urgency and the shouting. Fifteen minutes of time to herself and she would, she knew, be re-energised and ready to bring a few more souls into the world.

      Charity had been a midwife all her working life – thirty years, near enough. In all that time she had never met a colleague who didn’t have some complaint to make about the job – the conditions, the pay, the hours – but Charity had always loved it. There were difficult days, of course; there were deliveries that went wrong, that ended in heartbreak; and she would never be a rich woman. But on the whole Charity felt blessed to be doing what she was doing.

      She bought her drink and took a seat on one of the plastic chairs. It was seven in the evening, but the hospital was still busy, and she watched as people rushed in and out of the large main doors – visitors, doctors, patients – all of them creating a throng of activity. Charity sat quietly for five minutes, absorbing it all in a kind of daydream.

      It was the sight of the girl that brought her back to her senses. She was standing in the doorway, her clothes sopping wet and her matted black hair stuck to the side of her face. She was pale – deathly pale – and she looked around her as though she was completely lost and confused. Then she doubled over, her hands clutching the side of her belly. She stayed like that for perhaps twenty seconds. When she straightened up, she looked so scared that it caught Charity’s breath.

      Charity had been a midwife for long enough to know what those twenty seconds of agony were. She got to her feet and hurried over to where the girl was standing.

      ‘Come on, love,’ she said, her voice automatically slipping into the kindly bedside manner she used with all pregnant women. ‘Let’s get you upstairs. Can you walk? Best if you do, eh?’

      The girl stared at her as though she hadn’t understood a word.

      Charity put her arm around the girl’s shoulders and started ushering her in. ‘Look at you,’ she said, carrying on talking brightly. ‘You’re wet through. Sooner we get you out of these clothes and into something dry, the better, eh? Got someone here with you, have you, love? Baby’s father?’

      The girl shook her head violently.

      ‘Mum?’

      Again she shook her head. Poor dear, Charity thought. It happened like that sometimes. They walked slowly towards the lift.

      On the way up to the maternity ward, Charity took a better look at this strange girl with the matted hair and the soaking wet clothes. She seemed young, and her belly was barely swollen. It wasn’t so uncommon for that to happen – you might not even have known she was pregnant if you hadn’t seen the signs – but Charity couldn’t help wondering how far gone she was. ‘How many months, love?’ she asked as the doors hissed open on to the maternity ward.

      ‘Five,’ the girl replied hesitantly.

      It was all Charity could do not to let the worry show in her face. She held her security card up to the panel by the entrance door and, when it clicked open, hurried the girl through.

      ‘What’s your name, love?’ she asked.

      No reply.

      ‘How old are you?’

      ‘S–seventeen,’ the girl stuttered a bit too quickly. It was obviously a lie, but Charity couldn’t worry too much about that just at the moment. Her job was to look after the girl and deliver a desperately premature baby against the odds. Everything else could wait until later.

      A nurse was standing at reception. ‘We’re going to need a doctor,’ Charity told her quietly. ‘And make sure there’s room in Special Care.’

      The nurse looked at her quizzically.

      Five months. Charity mouthed the words silently to the nurse, whose expression immediately changed to one of concern. The midwife nodded meaningfully, and then continued to walk with the girl towards the delivery suite.

      Her patient was shaking violently, and Charity knew she wasn’t far off now.

      Hayley did not get the chance to hold her baby girl before she was taken away. But she saw her in the hands of the midwife, and she heard the tiny squawk of her little voice. She was so small. So desperately, impossible small – barely larger than the midwife’s hands – and, despite her absolute exhaustion, Hayley felt an overwhelming need to reach out and touch the child. She pushed herself up on to her elbows, but her strength had left her and she could do nothing but look as the baby was placed in a clear Perspex cot and wheeled out of the birthing room.

      Then the nice midwife was there, standing СКАЧАТЬ