The Girl Before(35)

“Did she speak to anyone else? A senior midwife? Resident?”

“Not that I recall. Tessa, what is this?”

“It’s just that this letter reads to me like a carefully worded attempt to give you the impression there was no medical negligence involved in Isabel’s death,” she says bluntly.

I gape at her. “Negligence? How?”

“If you start from the position that the death of a viable baby is a death that should have been avoided, then usually you find one of two things has caused it. First, a mismanaged birth. That obviously wasn’t the case here. But the second most common cause of stillbirth is an overworked midwife or junior doctor failing to read a CTG trace correctly. In your case, the senior doctor on call should have reviewed the results himself and, given the back pain you reported—which can be an indication of problems with the placenta—ordered a Doppler scan.” I know about Doppler scans: One of Still Hope’s campaign goals is for every expectant mother to receive one as a matter of course. It will cost about fifteen pounds per baby, and the fact the NHS currently doesn’t do them unless a senior doctor specifically requests it is one of the reasons why stillbirth rates in the UK are among the worst in Europe. “I’m afraid the kicking you felt after you went home may have been distress, not a sign everything was all right. We’ve got a history with this hospital. They’re consistently understaffed, particularly at senior doctor level. Dr. Gifford’s name comes up again and again. He basically has way too high a workload.”



The words are barely sinking in. But he was so nice, I think.

“Of course, you can argue that’s not his fault,” she adds. “But it’s only by going after the senior doctor and proving they failed the patient that we’ll ever get the hospital to increase their staffing ratios.”

I remember Dr. Gifford telling me, even as he broke the news that Isabel was dead, that in the majority of cases no cause was ever found. Was he trying to cover up for his team’s mistakes, even then? “What should I do?”

She hands the letter back to me. “Write back asking for a copy of all the medical records. We’ll get them reviewed by an expert, but if it looks as if the hospital is covering up incompetence, we should think about litigation.”





THEN: EMMA

And this year’s Architects’ Journal Award for Innovation goes to…

The presenter pauses dramatically and opens his envelope. The Monkford Partnership, he announces.

Our table, made up of Partnership staff, cheers. Images of buildings flash onto the screens. Edward gets up and makes his way to the stage, politely acknowledging a few well-wishers as he does so.

This is nothing like the parties I went to at Simon’s magazine, I’m thinking.

When Edward has the award in his hands he steps toward the microphone. I may have to put this in a cupboard, he says, looking down at the Plexiglas blob doubtfully. Laughter. The minimalist has proved he can make fun of himself! But then he turns serious.

Someone once said that the difference between a good architect and a great one is that the good architect gives in to every temptation and the great one does not.

He pauses. There’s silence around the huge room. They seem genuinely interested in what he has to say.

As architects, we’re obsessed with aesthetics, with creating buildings that are pleasing to the eye. But if we accept that the real function of architecture is to help people resist temptation, then perhaps architecture…



He falters, almost as if he’s thinking out loud.

Perhaps architecture isn’t really about buildings at all, he says. We accept that town planning is a kind of architecture, after all. Motorway networks, airports—these too, at a stretch. But what about technology? What about that invisible city in which we all stroll, or lurk, or play: the Internet? What about the frameworks of our lives, the bonds that tie us, our aspirations and our baser desires? Are these not also structures, in a way?

There’s another pause before he continues: Earlier today, I was speaking to someone. A young woman who was attacked in her home. Her space was violated. Her possessions were stolen. Her whole attitude to her surroundings has been colored—I might almost say, distorted—by that simple, tragic fact.

He doesn’t look at me, but I feel as if every person in the room must know who he means.

Isn’t the real function of architecture to make such a thing impossible? he asks. To punish the perpetrator, heal the victim, change the future? As architects, why should we stop at our buildings’ walls?

Silence. The audience seems quite baffled now.

The Monkford Partnership is known as a practice that works on a small scale, with wealthy clients, he says. But I see now that our future lies not in building beautiful havens from the ugliness in society, but in building a different kind of society.

He raises the award. Thank you for this honor.

The applause is polite, but looking around, I see people are smiling and rolling their eyes at one another.

And I clap too, harder than anyone, because the man up there, my lover, doesn’t give a damn whether they laugh at him or not.

—

That night I ask about his wife.

I keep the dress on while we make love, but afterward I hang it carefully in the tiny cupboard behind the wall panel before slipping, naked except for the necklace, into the warm space beside him.