The Secret Mother(46)

‘If the insurance goes up, the charges go up,’ explained Dr Fisher, who sees around 120 private patients a year. ‘In fact, this could very well put a stop to private births in the UK. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about the rising premiums. Instead, I’ll be setting up a new practice away from London to cut down on overhead costs and hopefully pass these savings on to my clients.’



I read through the rest of the article, but there’s no further mention of Fisher or the name of the hospital where he works.

I spend the next ten minutes or so scrolling through the other results. There’s nothing that definitively suggests Harry’s father is the same doctor as the one from that first article. One of them brings up a ‘Meet the Team’ page for a maternity clinic in Wimborne, Dorset, along with a photo of the man I met in Cranborne. This must be where he currently works. His photograph – a corporate headshot – sits at the top of the page to the left of a short biography. Qualified in 1992, with over ten years’ experience as a gynaecologist, and now a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist in Wimborne…

So now I know that the James Fisher in London and the one in Wimborne are both gynaecologists. That’s too much of a coincidence; surely they are one and the same man? I continue scanning the results. Just as my eyes are beginning to grow heavy, a name jumps out at me from one of the articles – a hospital monthly newsletter: Having previously worked at Parkfield Hospital, consultant James Fisher is now leaving the team here at the Balmoral Clinic to set up his own practice in Dorset.

There it is! The connection: the Balmoral Clinic. A chill sweeps over my body. That must be why I recognise him. My heart begins to twang painfully, like a string being plucked. James Fisher practised at the clinic where I gave birth to my children.

After my parents died, I was left a small inheritance. Most of this went on the deposit for our house, but Scott persuaded me to use the rest to have our twins in a private hospital, rather than use the NHS. Apparently, his favourite footballer and his wife were having their child at the Balmoral, a swanky private birth clinic here in London so Scott thought I should do the same. Granted, the midwives were lovely and the place was like a boutique hotel, but I really didn’t see the point of wasting all that money when I could have had my children for free in a perfectly good hospital. And ultimately, despite the five-star treatment, that posh clinic couldn’t prevent my daughter’s death.

I had a natural birth, delivering Sam first and then Lily. Sam was fine, but Lily died only half an hour after being born. I didn’t even get to hold her while she was alive. The report said it was due to umbilical cord compression resulting in a lack of oxygen and blood flow. Apparently this type of cord compression is common when carrying twins, but only a small number of babies die because of it.

I always wondered if we should have questioned the hospital staff further – asked for an autopsy or an inquiry. But at the time, Scott and I were all over the place, not thinking straight. Relieved at Sam’s safe arrival, but devastated by the loss of Lily.

I remember holding Sam in my arms when they told me Lily hadn’t made it. A boy and a girl, I kept saying to myself over and over like a chant. A boy and a girl. We hadn’t wanted to know the sexes beforehand, we wanted it to be a surprise. Sam had dark hair like Scott, and Lily was fair like me. I can see her in my mind’s eye. Picture her perfect little body with her ten pink fingers and ten pink toes, tiny shell-like ears and almost translucent skin. And her utter, utter stillness.

I blink, shaking away the image as my mind begins to race, synapses firing, lights flashing on, my body quivering. What does this new information actually mean? Surely it has to mean something. Something big…?

What if… what if Fisher was the consultant who delivered my babies? Our assigned consultant – Dr Friedland – couldn’t attend the birth as he was ill at the time with gastric flu. I can’t remember the name of the doctor on duty when Sam and Lily were born. He was briefly at the delivery, but disappeared soon after, leaving Scott and me in the care of the midwives. Could it have been Fisher?

I sigh with frustration. Why can’t I remember? There is one way to find out. I recall Sam’s red book – the health record that detailed his developmental milestones. Surely the name of the medical staff who attended the birth would have been recorded in it?

I jump out of bed, slip my feet into my ancient, ratty slippers, and head downstairs, still clutching my phone, my mind whirling with all this might mean. Then I pad through the hall and into the dining room, which used to double as my office. I switch on the overhead chandelier – an extravagant purchase from back when I used to care about stuff like interior design. The light in here is dim and shadowy. I look up and notice that only one of the five bulbs still works.

I stride across the room towards my desk – a dusty white slab of wood – and crouch down to pull open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet tucked beneath it. Sam has his own file, a slim folder containing all his paperwork and achievements. A file I expected to grow fatter over the years, but which instead has remained the same sad width. Lily’s file is even slimmer.

Walking my fingers across the tops of the alphabetised files, I scan from P to R to S. But to my irritation, Sam’s file isn’t here. Perhaps it’s been put back incorrectly. My knees ache from crouching, so I sit on the draughty wooden floor and cross my legs as I painstakingly search through first the bottom drawer and then the top drawer of the filing cabinet. Still no sign of Sam’s file, or Lily’s. I check again. Nothing. I begin opening desk drawers, checking bookshelves. I heave out the filing cabinet from underneath the desk. There are various dusty papers squashed behind it, but nothing about Sam. No red book.