The Secret Mother(70)
I’m listening to him with a kind of fascinated dread, barely breathing.
Fisher’s eyes glaze as he remembers. ‘You were already in good hands with your midwife when I arrived, so I concentrated on looking after Liz. Naturally, I wanted to be with my wife during the birth of our first child, but as the clinic was short-staffed and your delivery seemed straightforward, I was happy to cover. I told your midwife that I’d come to you immediately if you got into any difficulty, but she assured me that things were progressing well.
‘But then…’ He looks from me to Scott, finally lowering his gaze back down to his knees. ‘But then, my own child got into difficulties. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the neck, cutting off blood flow and oxygen. I would normally have a midwife in the room with me, but I was overconfident – I thought I had the situation under control.’ His voice breaks and he clears his throat. ‘I tried everything I could to save her, but I panicked. I’m usually calm, professional. I deliver hundreds of healthy children every year, but this was my child, my wife. The child we’d been trying for ten years to conceive. I… I couldn’t save my own baby. She died. My child died. I couldn’t save her. It was my fault.’
‘She?’ Scott questions immediately. ‘Her?’
‘I made a decision,’ Fisher says. ‘A split-second decision that’s haunted me ever since. You have to believe me, I never planned for it to happen. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t know how to tell Liz our baby was gone.’
My heart beats in time with his words. A slow marching drum, getting faster.
Fisher turns to me. ‘You had already given birth to one healthy twin. The next one was coming, and that’s when I did it.’
I’m shaking now. My whole body, top-to-toe, my teeth chattering. I know what he’s going to say, but I don’t want to hear it. How will I bear it?
‘Lily was my daughter,’ Fisher says. ‘Mine and Liz’s. But she died a few moments after birth and I was grieving. I don’t think I was in my right mind.’
‘Lily was yours?’ I whisper, a chill sweeping through me.
But Fisher doesn’t reply. He’s intent on his confession. ‘Scott, you were on your phone, texting family members to say you had a son. I told you that mobiles interfered with the hospital equipment and sent you out of the room. Told you to go to the parents’ lounge. I said you had about twenty minutes before your next child came along. I lied.’
He turns back to me. ‘Just before your second child was born, I sent the midwife to check on another woman in labour. You were still woozy from the birth and from the effects of the pain relief. In a moment of utter madness, I swapped them. I swapped my dead child for your living one.’ He pulls at his cheeks, unable to look at me or Scott, his gaze fixed on some distant spot.
‘Harry… he was Sam’s brother,’ Fisher says. ‘He was your second child. He is your second child. I’ve done a terrible thing, I know. I have no excuses. At the time, I told myself that you already had one healthy child. I told myself I did it for Liz, to save her from grief. It would have destroyed her… I am so very, very sorry.’
‘To save her from grief?’ I murmur almost to myself. ‘But what about my grief? What about that?’ He’s telling me he’s sorry. He did this heinous thing and he’s apologising like he took the last slice of cake, or scratched my car, or accidentally bumped me with his trolley in the supermarket. ‘You can’t just apologise for this,’ I spit. ‘You can’t make excuses and apologise for taking my living, breathing baby and swapping him for your dead daughter.’
Fisher is still speaking. Saying the words over and over again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’
‘Stop it!’ I cry. ‘Just stop saying sorry. Stop it!’
He closes his mouth for a moment before carrying on with his explanation, taking my life apart with his words. ‘My wife never knew,’ he says quickly. ‘She thought Harry was ours. She loved him like he was our own. So did I. I buried the truth deep, but the truth has sharp edges. It cut me up inside. Every day.’
I want to scream at him that I know exactly how those sharp edges feel. But I will myself to stay quiet. To listen to the rest. His confession is spewing out of his mouth now like an airborne virus, infecting us all.
‘When my wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer, something came over me. An epiphany. I thought, if I don’t tell her about Harry now, I’ll never have the chance. And so I confessed. I told her everything I’d done. She was devastated. Shocked. Disgusted. She had every right to be. She died a broken woman. I did that to her. All I ever wanted was to be a doctor. To help people. But instead…’ He trails off. Buries his face in his hands.
The absolute knowledge of the truth takes the strength from my body, and I lower my head to the wooden floor, curl up and grip my knees, the truth gradually sinking in like poison from a syringe. I have no words now, only tears. My nostrils fill with the bitter odour of realisation. Of loss. Of everything that has been stripped from me. The grief for a dead daughter who was never mine to grieve for. The devastation after Sam died. Being a mother with no children to care for. All of it. All of it too much to bear, knowing that half of it need not have been borne in the first place.
And yet, didn’t I know this even before now? Since that day Harry showed up in my kitchen, those brown curls so familiar, his eyes twin reflections of a lost child.