Whispers (40 page)

‘Do you fancy coming for a ride to see Karen with me tonight?’ she asked, forcing herself to sound normal although she felt far from it.

Dragging her eyes away from
Emmerdale Farm
just long enough to flash a smile, Jo nodded. ‘Yes, please, but can you wait until this has finished?’

‘All right, but if you’re not ready to go the second it does, I’m off without you otherwise it won’t be worth going.’

Jess pottered off back to the kitchen to clear the pots from the table, relieved to see that Simon had taken himself off to the shower. She then lifted the sketch and popped it into her bag to take with her before busying herself until it was time to go.

Karen was just as sceptical as Simon had been when she showed her the sketch later that evening. ‘I tell you, Jess, I’m getting really worried about you,’ she said frankly. ‘This girl is nothing at all to do with you. She could have been anyone!’

Jess kept her smile firmly fixed in place. Just like Simon, Karen could be very stubborn, and she knew that it would be useless trying to convince her that Martha was still in her house. Without a word she hastily shoved the sketch back into her bag and changed the subject, and for the rest of the evening it wasn’t mentioned again.

Jess left a little earlier than usual that night. Her ankles were puffy and she got tired easily.

‘Is everything all right, Mum?’ Jo asked on the way home, picking up on how quiet Jess was.

‘Everything is fine, sweetheart,’ Jess assured her. ‘I’m just a bit tired, that’s all. It’s lumping all this lot around in front of me. I shall be glad when your brother is here.’

Jo was instantly all smiles. ‘Less than two months to go now,’ she said happily.

The downstairs was in darkness when they got home and Jess fumbled her hand along the wall to locate the light switch in the kitchen.

‘Night, Mum.’ Jo patted Alfie and kissed her mother before skipping away to bed as Jess began to check that all the doors were firmly locked and bolted. She always made doubly sure ever since the break-in.

It was as she approached the landing that she saw Mel coming out of the bathroom. She was clutching her dressing-gown around her and had obviously been crying, but she didn’t even acknowledge her mother.

‘What’s wrong, love?’ As the girl approached her, Jess put her hand out to her but Mel slapped it away furiously.

‘What do
you
care?’ she screamed, obviously very close to hysteria. ‘Why don’t you just
leave
me alone? I
hate
you . . . do you hear me?
I hate you
.’ With that she tore along the landing and disappeared into her bedroom, slamming the door resoundingly behind her, leaving Jess to stare after her in amazement.

I wonder what the hell brought that on? Jess thought, but she knew better than to go and try to find out. When Mel was in this mood it was best to leave her well alone to come out of it.

Feeling deeply hurt, she stared from the landing window out over
the
gardens. They looked beautiful bathed in moonlight and she wished that the inside of the house could be as serene as the outside appeared to be.

Eventually she made for the staircase that led to the attics. She was out of breath by the time she reached the top. Soon she was standing in Martha’s room. The smell of roses was overpowering and now the whispers began again.

‘What
is
it you’re trying to tell me?’ she pleaded to the empty room and as she stood there praying for an answer she thought she heard soft footsteps on the stairs.

Hurrying to the door she peered up and down the narrow passageway but there was no one in sight.

Maybe I
am
going barmy, she thought to herself as she headed back towards the stairs. I reckon the best thing I could do is get myself off to bed. She was desperately tired now and looking forward to sinking into her comfortable mattress.

After clicking off the bare bulb that illuminated the landing she had just put her foot on the first step when she heard a scuffle behind her. Partially turning, she peered into the murk, but it was too dark to see anything other than a figure advancing on her – then suddenly she felt something shove her hard in the back. Her arms flailed as she tried to stay upright, but it was no good. She could feel herself falling and the next thing she knew she was toppling headlong down the steep staircase. She vaguely remembered wrapping her arms around her stomach to protect her unborn child, then she hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs with a sickening thud and pain flooded though her.

‘Help!’
she cried out feebly as she felt something warm and sticky gush from between her legs. And then she knew nothing more.

‘It’s all right, Jess. Just lie still now.’

Jess blinked in the bright light and then she groaned with pain and tried to roll herself into a ball.

‘You must lie still,’ the voice told her and Jess gazed up at a solemn-faced paramedic.

‘Where am I? What’s happened?’ She seemed to be looking at everything through a haze, and in that moment she wished that she could die. This was pain like she had never known before. All-consuming and agonising.

‘You’re in an ambulance on your way to the George Eliot Hospital.
You’ve
had an accident, but you’ll be all right if you just do as you’re told,’ the paramedic soothed her. ‘Your husband is following on in his car.’

Jess gasped as a fresh contraction ripped through her. She was in labour – it was a pain she would never forget – but it was too early. Would the baby survive being born this soon? Tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes as she gritted her teeth.

‘I . . . I was on the attic stairs,’ she told him as everything came rushing back. ‘And then somebody pushed me.’

‘Shush now,’ the man said urgently. ‘You’re haemorrhaging badly and I don’t want you to talk. Save your strength.’

She flopped back on the pillows, the sound of the ambulance’s siren loud in her ears, and prayed that they would be able to save her child.

When they arrived at the hospital the paramedic leaped up and swung the back doors open, and instantly two male nurses climbed in and began to manoeuvre her onto a wheeled stretcher. She could feel herself drifting in and out of consciousness; felt as if she was caught in the grip of a nightmare and prayed for it to end.

They had barely reached the doors to the hospital when Simon appeared at her side breathless and panting.

‘How is she?’ he asked the doctor who was waiting at the door for her.

‘We’ll know more when we’ve examined her,’ he replied shortly. ‘Now go into the waiting room, would you, sir, and leave us to do our job.’

Simon’s face faded away then Jess found herself staring up at the striplights set at intervals all along the hospital corridor as they rushed her along. Before she knew it she was wheeled into a room and the doctor was examining her.

‘C-can you stop the labour?’ she choked out, writhing in pain.

He prodded gently around her abdomen. ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Beddows. You’ve gone too far for that.’

A nurse was attaching a monitor to her that was recording the baby’s heartbeats, and as she looked towards the screen, Jess’s own heart contracted with terror. She had very little medical knowledge, but even she could see that the baby was in distress.

‘We’re going to perform an emergency caesarean,’ the doctor told her. ‘It will give the baby a better chance.’

‘No!’ Jess whimpered. But at that moment she felt a stinging pain
in
the back of her hand as the nurse administered an injection, and she felt as if she was floating.

The trolley she was lying on was moving again now as they rushed her off to theatre. People were waiting there for her, but all she could see of them were their eyes because they were wearing masks.

‘Now just try to relax,’ a voice encouraged.

She vaguely wondered where Simon was. And then suddenly memories came flooding back. She was standing at the top of the stairs and there was a dark shape behind her. Someone had pushed her. But who?

She opened her mouth, frantic for an answer but it was too hard to try and form words. Even as she struggled against it, her eyelids drooped and she fell into a drug-induced sleep.

When Jess woke up, there was a watery sun shining through the window at the side of the bed. She was in a small side room and beyond the door she could faintly hear the sound of babies crying. She prayed that one of them was hers.

She rubbed at her eyes for a second and when she opened them again she saw a nurse and a doctor in a starched white coat standing at the end of the bed as if they had appeared by magic.

‘My baby?’ she managed to choke out. Her throat was dry.

The doctor was a tall man with a mop of unruly fair hair and eyes that were red-rimmed from lack of sleep. Jess supposed that he was somewhere in his early thirties although the weary stoop of his shoulders made him appear at first glance to be much older.

He smiled at her sadly. ‘There’s no easy way for me to say this, so I’m just going to come right out with it. I’m so sorry, Mrs Beddows . . . but I’m afraid we lost the baby. The shock of the fall and the birth was just too much for him. He lived for ten minutes, although we did all we could to save him, I assure you.’

Jess stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief. ‘No, there must be some mistake. You must have my baby mixed up with someone else’s.’

The doctor and the nurse exchanged a glance before he told her softly, ‘I’m afraid there has been no mistake. Would you like to see him, Mrs Beddows?’

‘No!’
Jess was struggling to take in what he had just told her. She didn’t want to believe it yet something in his sad eyes told her that it was true. Her baby – her
son
was dead. Guilt stabbed at her sharp as a knife.
This must be my punishment for not being sure if I wanted him when I found out I was pregnant
, she told herself. The nurse came to hold her hand now but Jess shook her off roughly. She knew that she should be crying as she thought of the baby’s nursery back at home, but she felt numb inside, as if she was no longer capable of feelings.

‘Where is my husband?’ she asked dully.

‘He was here with you for most of the night after you came out of theatre,’ the nurse assured her. ‘But he left a while ago. He said he had to see to breakfast for your daughters. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.’

‘I have to continue with my rounds now, Mrs Beddows,’ the doctor said gently, ‘but if you need me, just tell the nurse here and she’ll page me. Thankfully, you’ve come out of the accident far better than you might have, and all being well, you’ll be able to go home tomorrow.’

Home
. . . the word rattled round and round in Jess’s head. She would be going home – without her baby. For months she had pictured leaving the hospital with him all wrapped snugly in a blue shawl, cradled in her arms, but that would never happen now. He would never wear the mountain of baby clothes she and Jo had chosen so lovingly, never ride on the beautiful rocking horse that she had made Simon carry down from the attic, or lie kicking in his cot as he watched the mobile of all the
Winnie the Pooh
characters dangling above it. She tentatively fingered the flabby stomach beneath the sheets, devoid of the life that had been growing there. And then her thoughts shifted, and once again she was at the top of the attic stairs. There
had
been someone standing behind her, a dark shadow, and they had pushed her. She could remember clearly the awful feeling as she had pitched head-first down the steep stairs. But who could it have been?

A picture of Mel’s face flashed before her eyes but she rejected it immediately.
I’m being irrational
, she told herself.
Mel might not have wanted the baby, she never made a secret of the fact, but she would never have done anything to harm me
.

As the sounds of babies crying wafted to her from the main ward beyond the door, instead of mourning for the little boy that she would never know now, she felt dead inside, as if her tears had been locked away in some dark and secret place from which they could not escape.
It’s perhaps as well
, she tried to convince herself.
If I start crying now I might never stop
.

A young woman in a voluminous dressing-gown carrying a new baby wrapped in a pink blanket pottered past the door then, her pride coming off her in bright rays as she stared down at the infant in her arms. She paused briefly when she felt Jess’s eyes on her, but then scuttled on when she noticed the empty crib that had been pushed into a corner of the room.

Jess stared at the ceiling. Where was Simon? He should be here. This had been his baby too and she wondered how he was feeling. He hadn’t wanted the baby either in the early days of her pregnancy,
but
he seemed to have come round to the idea over the last couple of months. And Jo . . . poor Jo. Jess knew that of all of them, she would be the worst affected by this latest accident. She had been so looking forward to having a baby brother.

A nurse came in then and Jess’s thoughts were distracted as the young woman fiddled with the IV drip that fed into the back of her hand. She took her temperature and her blood pressure before making notes on the chart that was hooked on the end of the bed then slipped away without a word. It seemed that no one quite knew what to say to her, but then what
could
they say?
I’m so sorry that your baby has died
? It sounded so ineffectual.

At lunch-time a nurse brought her an unappetising-looking meal on a tray but Jess ignored it and eventually it was taken away untouched. Mid-afternoon, another woman came into the room and introduced herself as the hospital’s social worker. She looked to be little older than Mel, and Jess gazed at her blankly. She was a pretty young woman with soulful brown eyes and shoulder-length fair hair, dressed in a checked shirt and jeans, and as she pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and sat down, Jess suddenly felt very old.

‘I’m Christie Best,’ she told Jess solemnly, then went on to ask if Jess would like to see a counsellor. ‘It does help sometimes to talk about it,’ she told her softly.