Forget Me Not Read online

  In the darkness, I see the shape of my sleeping child. She lies on her side, one hand cupping her chin. Strands of black hair fall across her face.

  Chapter 6

  At eleven o’clock the next morning, Intensive Care is quiet. There are only twelve babies with us on the unit, and at full capacity we can take up to eighteen. Radhika is looking after the set of newborn twins, while I’m caring for David, our twenty-eight weeker. David’s father is beside the incubator, his finger inside one of his son’s tiny fists. He has that shell-shocked look all the parents have when they first come in here. His wife is still on the labour ward downstairs, she hasn’t made it up yet.

  ‘Rose?’ Wendy hovers at the door. She beckons to me and her sombre expression tells me she is not the bearer of good news.

  For the sake of Jonas’s father, I smile as I secure my notes in place next to the incubator. I walk across the ward with slow, calm steps.

  ‘There’s a DS Cole here to see you,’ Wendy says. She keeps her voice down.

  I’m thrown for a moment as one of my worlds collides with the other.

  ‘I’ll take over here,’ Wendy says. ‘There’s no rush.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She pats my shoulder as I walk past her.

  ‘Also,’ she calls after me, ‘Mrs Murad’s left another message for you.’

  DS Cole is waiting outside the front door of the unit, in the area where visitors hang their coats, pull blue plastic coverings over their shoes and disinfect their hands.

  She wears a long herringbone coat over a tailored white shirt, and I notice how the tweed tapers a little at the waist, so that somehow the masculine fabric emphasizes her femininity. Her dark roots show – deliberately, I think – under her peroxided fringe.

  ‘I’m so sorry to bother you at work, Rose,’ she says. ‘I have a few more questions you might be able to help me with.’

  ‘Of course.’ I try not to look annoyed at the intrusion. She’s only doing her job.

  I grab my coat, the one Vivien gave to me for my fiftieth birthday, the one I have barely taken off in recent weeks, and pull it over my scrubs. I change into a different pair of trainers. I suggest we go down to the ground floor to get a coffee and I lead the way to the lift, then through the warren of bridges and passages that connect the various buildings. We don’t make small talk.

  The café is near the front exit and a continuous flow of people passes in and out of the glass doors. It’s draughty and we huddle inside our coats. DS Cole leans down and searches inside her satchel, a bag made of green canvas. She takes out a notebook, which she opens on a fresh page. Then she lays a ballpoint pen down along the centre fold. She leans forward, looking out at me from under her fringe.

  ‘I know you mentioned in our last interview that your relationship with your daughter wasn’t a very close one,’ she says, ‘but I wondered whether you knew that Vivien was taking antidepressants?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of what, if any, medication she was taking.’

  Yet again, I feel as though I’ve been judged and found wanting.

  ‘I wondered if you knew whether your daughter was unhappy about anything in particular?’

  ‘I don’t think depression is about being unhappy,’ I say. ‘Depression is an illness.’

  ‘But something might have triggered her illness.’

  I don’t say anything at all; I wait for her to go on.

  ‘Mr Kaye has told us that Vivien started taking antidepressants around three months ago,’ she says. ‘Would you have any thoughts about why she began taking antidepressants at this particular time?’

  ‘I really don’t know. She didn’t share those kinds of things with me. Vivien was a very private person, so I doubt she would have wanted people to know she was unhappy.’

  ‘Not even her own mother?’

  She has sharp eyes, DS Cole. And she’s no fool. I tell myself she doesn’t mean it as an accusation.

  ‘If I had to guess,’ I say, ‘I’d say that the depression might have been linked to her difficulty conceiving a second baby. She’d been having fertility treatment for several years. But as I say, that’s really just a guess. Vivien didn’t discuss the details of her treatment with me.’

  A cleaner wearing bright purple gloves mops the floor around us. I watch him, hypnotized by the rhythm of the mop, moving smoothly, back and forth, over the damp floor, sweeping away the dirt and the debris.

  ‘In fact,’ I say, ‘my impression was always that it was Ben who really wanted a second child, and that Vivien was more anxious about letting him down than about not being able to fall pregnant.’

  ‘Did Vivien ever talk about her marriage?’ DS Cole says.

  The conversation seems to have made an about-turn. I pause as I try to catch up with where this interview is headed.

  ‘For example,’ she goes on, ‘would Vivien have told you if she and Ben were having difficulties? Arguing?’

  ‘She didn’t talk about her marriage,’ I say. ‘I don’t think there was much to say, because I assumed it was all going well. Ben and Vivien were always close, a tight unit. And no, Vivien didn’t tell me about any arguments.’

  The cleaner is now emptying see-through dustbin bags into a large black bin on wheels.

  ‘As I said, Vivien was a private person. She was generally very reserved, and I think people who didn’t know her well might sometimes have mistaken her reticence for rudeness. She could seem stand-offish. Is any of this relevant?’

  I have no idea what DS Cole is looking for. My mouth is dry again and I take a sip from my bottle of water. DS Cole waits in silence, as if to encourage me to keep talking. But she doesn’t write anything down.

  ‘Ben and Vivien were devoted to each other,’ I say. ‘They’d been married for ten years and from what I could see, their marriage was a strong one. One of those that would have lasted.’

  For the first time, DS Cole looks uncomfortable. She rubs the cropped hair at the back of her neck.

  ‘In this type of investigation,’ she says, ‘a certain amount of sensitive information tends to come to light, regardless of whether or not it’s relevant to our inquiry.’

  ‘I see.’ I tap my fingertips against the Formica table top and look across at the kiosk, where a bored teenager with dyed-black hair and eyebrow piercings is texting on her mobile phone.

  DS Cole changes her position in the chair, pressing her hands down on the seat on either side of her. ‘A witness has come forward to say they saw Vivien and Ben having an argument,’ she says. ‘This would have been on the day before Vivien died, while she and Ben were visiting a jewellery shop. We also have information that Ben didn’t spend the night at home. He checked into a hotel overnight.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m … I’m shocked.’

  ‘You didn’t know?’ DS Cole says.

  ‘No. Are you sure about all of this?’

  She nods.

  ‘I’m not surprised to hear they argued, but I find it hard to believe that Ben would walk out on Vivien and Lexi. That would be completely unlike him.’

  My daughter spent her last night on earth alone.

  ‘But if your daughter was a private person, then there are things she may not have shared with you?’

  ‘Yes. But then I know Ben, and I’ve seen the way he is with his wife and daughter. He was devoted to them. They were his life. Ben puts his family before everything.’

  I can’t tell whether DS Cole is convinced by what I’ve said. But it is the whole truth.

  ‘Are you aware of anything that was a source of conflict between them? Something so serious that Ben would walk out?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I really have no idea.’

  I think of Isaac. He probably knows more than I do about the state of their marriage. DS Cole is staring at me, as though she’s hoping I might remember something.

  ‘Did Vivien by any chance tell you about plans for an important dinner at her home on the night bef
ore she died?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Look, DS Cole, please, can you tell me what this is all about? Quite frankly, you appear to know more than I do about the state of my daughter’s marriage.’

  She takes pity on me, and answers my question, at least in part. ‘We understand,’ she says, ‘that there was supposed to be a catered dinner for thirty people at your daughter’s home the night before she died. The dinner was related to a significant business transaction, a merger between Ben’s company and another investment firm. But Ben cancelled at short notice, telling his clients that he had to leave the country on business. He has subsequently told us that he and Vivien had argued and she’d then refused to host the dinner. That was the real reason for the cancellation. He says that after they argued, he left your daughter at the jeweller’s, had a few drinks at a pub and checked into a hotel near his office. He stayed there overnight. To cool down.’

  ‘So Ben told you about the argument himself?’

  ‘Yes. But only after a colleague came forward to tell us about the cancelled dinner plans and the fact that Ben had said he was out of the country when he wasn’t.’

  ‘I see. Did Ben say why they’d argued?’

  ‘Apparently there was a disagreement over a piece of jewellery – an expensive piece your daughter wanted. Ben said he’s been having a tougher time than usual with his cash flow, because he’s invested most of his capital into his investment firm. Does that sound like something your daughter would do – push him to buy her something expensive?’

  ‘I imagine my daughter could have played her part in this argument,’ I say, ‘in winding Ben up. Ben is much more easy-going than Vivien ever was.’

  ‘Can you explain what you mean?’

  ‘Vivien could be controlling. She liked everything to be just so – the way she looked, what she wore, what she ate. It could get …’ I pause as I search for the right word. ‘Well, it could get exhausting. Frustrating. She grew up in a council flat, with a mother who worked twelve-hour shifts and who was permanently anxious about money. That kind of life leaves its mark.’

  ‘The thing is,’ DS Cole says, ‘the owner of the jewellery shop doesn’t remember it the way Ben does. He remembers Ben encouraging Vivien to pick out any piece she wanted, as though money was no object.’

  ‘Memory is a strange thing,’ I say.

  DS Cole picks up her pen. I think she might be going to write something down, at last, but all she does is draw a series of short black lines as she runs her pen back and forth in the corner of the page.

  ‘May I ask why this argument between Vivien and Ben is of any significance?’

  ‘It may not be,’ she says, ‘but your daughter’s death is still unexplained. And it seems the earrings that Ben and Vivien eventually settled on buying are missing from the house.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So your daughter didn’t contact you at all on that Thursday, perhaps later on in the evening, after the argument?’

  I shake my head. ‘No, she didn’t.’

  DS Cole closes her notebook, the pen still inside, making a bulge down the middle, and shoves it back into her large bag.

  ‘Thank you for taking the time to talk to me,’ she says. ‘I apologize again for disturbing you at work.’

  We stand and shake hands. I’m aware of how cold and dry my skin must feel. There is a strange tension between us.

  I watch her walk away, waiting until she’s disappeared through the wide glass doors of the main entrance.

  Chapter 7

  I see Vivien, as a newborn. Her skull is so perfectly formed, her fontanelle still soft and vulnerable. Her eyes are closed, her lashes long and black, her mouth a rosebud—

  ‘Rose?’

  A woman’s voice, far away, disturbs my reverie.

  ‘Rose?’ The voice is louder, closer.

  I look down and I see I’m holding a bottle of breast milk in my hand. I’m standing in front of a small fridge. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Amanda, a young nurse from New Zealand, is standing beside me. She’s one of the nurses I most enjoy working with. When I was managing the ward and she was on duty, I could relax. I didn’t have to watch her, or stay alert for errors, the way I did with some of the others. Amanda is kind. There is a link, I believe: those nurses who are careless with the babies, who handle them a little roughly or laugh too loud over their cots, those are the ones that make careless mistakes. Amanda is not one of those.

  ‘I drifted off,’ I say. ‘I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here.’

  This has never happened to me on the ward. Up until now, I’ve been in control here at work. Amanda is looking at the bottle in my hand. I can see she’s worried.

  ‘Do you need help with something?’ I say.

  The staff still come to me for advice, they’re used to me being in charge. I’ve been here such a long time. Forever.

  ‘Aren’t you looking after the Jones baby today?’ Amanda says.

  I nod. She points at the milk bottle. ‘I think you’ve grabbed the wrong bottle there.’

  I look down. The handwriting on the bottle is blurred. I hold it further away from my face until I can make out the label, which says James. The two bottles of milk must have been side by side, and distracted by DS Cole’s questions, I’ve picked up the wrong one.

  ‘Let me help you out there,’ Amanda says. She takes the bottle from me and places it back inside the fridge. She finds the one I need and hands it to me.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She’s saved me. If I’d given the wrong milk to a baby and my mistake had been discovered, either by me or by the parents, there would have been drama. And panic and HIV testing and a vulnerable baby at risk. There would have been a complaint.

  ‘I’m going home,’ I say. ‘Can you ask Wendy to get cover for me?’

  ‘Of course. No worries. Go home and rest.’

  Amanda is blonde and full of curves; it’s like looking at the opposite of my daughter. I place the bottle of milk back in her competent hands and leave the room.

  As I make my way down the corridor, I feel myself dipping and sinking, my head slipping underwater, as though there are waves beneath my shoes instead of blue linoleum. The chaos and the confusion and the breaking apart have found me here. I suppose it was only a matter of time.

  Forty minutes later I step out of the side entrance to the hospital and into the wet and miserable afternoon. Isaac is waiting for me.

  ‘Thank you for coming to get me,’ I say.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  My cashmere coat is wrapped tight around me but it cannot ward off the cold. The paving stones are slippery after the rain and I stumble slightly. Isaac reaches out, takes hold of my arm and steadies me for a brief moment. I look around, as though DS Cole might be lurking somewhere, following me, camouflaged between the grey skies and the grey pavement.

  The car is parked a street away. I’m worn out, as though fatigue has burrowed right down inside my bones, and I’m grateful Isaac is beside me. I couldn’t bear the bus, not today, couldn’t bear to sit amongst all those poor and exhausted people. Stop. Start. Stop. An interminable journey ending at an empty flat. I am one of them. Poor. Exhausted. Alone.

  When we reach Vivien’s car, Isaac opens the passenger door for me and waits while I climb in. The car is spotless. I wonder if he has removed all traces of Vivien, or if there are still remnants, bits of her life secreted in the crevices between the seats, down the sides of the doors, tucked away inside the glove compartment.

  As I fasten my seatbelt, I’m sure I catch her scent, the scent of flowers, though I’m not sure if this is real or in my imagination.

  Isaac gets in, closes the door with a soft whump, and starts the engine. This car purrs. Cocooned in the plush interior with Isaac, I feel a little better. I begin to revive.

  ‘DS Cole came to see me today,’ I say. ‘
She turned up at the hospital, out of the blue.’

  Isaac is checking his side mirror, pulling out into the traffic.

  ‘She asked about an argument between Ben and Vivien, the day before Vivien died. She told me that Ben didn’t spend the night at home.’

  I turn in my seat, so my body is angled towards his. But Isaac looks straight ahead, and he gives nothing away. He stays silent, his profile inscrutable.

  ‘Isaac, did you know Ben walked out on her the night before she died?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I knew. But it wasn’t my place to pry, and I didn’t ask questions.’

  We’re making slow progress, edging our way onto the flyover.

  ‘Ben called me and told me where he was staying,’ Isaac says. ‘He asked me to go past the house, to check everything was all right. Vivien had really shafted him by calling off the dinner; those people were critical investors. He needed some time on his own, but he was planning to go home the next day.’

  ‘Was everything all right, when you went past the house?’

  ‘As far as I could tell. When Vivien came to the front door she was calmer than I expected, she didn’t seem that upset.’ Finally, he glances over at me. ‘She didn’t invite me in. She asked me not to press the buzzer again because she didn’t want the noise to wake Alexandra. She said she’d just managed to get her to bed. In hindsight, I wish I’d stayed for a while. Or persuaded Ben to go home.’

  ‘In hindsight we’d all do things differently,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything.’

  ‘I have no idea what the argument was about,’ he says. ‘I’d dropped Vivien off at the jeweller’s earlier that day and they seemed happy to see each other. They were holding hands.’

  ‘Did he leave her alone like that often?’

  ‘I don’t know. I doubt it. That was the only time he’s ever asked me to drive past to check on the house at night.’

  He looks sideways at me again and his eyes linger on my face a moment before turning back to the road. His left hand rests on the handbrake, inches from my thigh. His fingernails are neatly trimmed and clean.