Chapter 26

TWENTY-SIX

When Charlotte was tiny – and a whole night's sleep was little more than a rumour – Joanna used to get through the day on a conveyor belt of coffee. It meant that she spent most of those months simultaneously bone tired yet artificially wired. That was a little how she felt now: her grief was so immense that it threatened to pull her under at any time, yet the need to look out for her tiny grandaughter kept her alert and determined.

After leaving the brightly lit corridor, the baby ITU was quiet and the lights were low and restful. Sitting beside the baby's cot, Joanna's mind kept wandering back to Annabelle's text. I've finally worked out where I know you from.

Joanna had grown up in a very comfortable, middle-class home. Her father was a solicitor who'd done really well for himself. Her mother was a professional committee member on anything going in the local area and they lived in a detached house with a large garden. She was an only child who had access to anything she wanted: horse riding lessons, ballet classes, nice clothes and toys and holidays abroad.

Halfway through senior school, her father's business had been doing so well that they'd taken her out of the local state school and sent her to Brent Hall. The exorbitant private school fees were met, skiing holidays were taken, dinner party guests entertained.

Until the day that her father was arrested for embezzlement and their whole world came crashing down.

It didn't take long for the news to be the hot topic of gossip among the parents of Brent Hall school. Then, almost immediately, for that gossip to be picked up by their children. Like chickenpox, the news spread throughout the school. It wasn't as if Joanna had many friends to lose, but she did lose the one friendly face that had helped her to keep afloat: Jacob.

He didn't tell her explicitly that her father's arrest was the reason for ending their relationship. His parents, so he said, thought it was important that he ‘focus on his studies' and that a girlfriend would get in the way of that. He'd been apologetic, but there was no offer of waiting until they were older or even staying friends. The boy she'd believed had loved her just dropped her like a stone.

Once her father's assets were frozen, there was no money for school fees and Joanna was to be unceremoniously dropped from the school roll as soon as the term her father had already paid for had ended. Dumped by her boyfriend, reeling from the events in her family life, she'd been easy prey for Annabelle Miles and her friends. Scuttling from lesson to lesson, shrinking to the corners of the playground at breaktime, every morning she'd beg her mother to believe that her stomach ache was bad enough to stay home. Her mother hadn't budged. ‘We've paid for this term, so you need to make the most of it before you have to leave.' She didn't blame her – her mother had her own issues to deal with – but it was impossible to make her understand just how awful it was at school.

This is why she'd been so worried about Charlotte and Freddie. She'd known it would end in tears. Charlotte had trusted Freddie the way she'd trusted Jacob. Everything Charlotte had said about Freddie – he loves me, he's different, he's kind, he cares – had been the same things she'd thought about Jacob. But when the chips were down, people like that think only of themselves.

And now Annabelle had remembered their shared history. Joanna's face had burned reading that text. What had jogged Annabelle's memory? Admittedly, this was now the third time they'd met in a very short space of time; was that all it had taken? Or had her vulnerability – the way she'd opened up about her arguments with Charlotte – made her more recognisable to the bully who'd ensured her school life had been a misery?

She shook her head. What was the point in thinking about any of this? She wasn't that scared little girl any longer. She'd met and married a wonderful man. Steve had been the most loving and dependable of husbands. The most kind and generous of fathers. He'd given her – and Charlotte – a life of security and fun and love. Now, with Steve and Charlotte gone, she had to step up and do the same; provide all of those things for Charlotte's little girl.

In the crib next to theirs, a mother was being helped to hold her tiny baby. Joanna watched as she laid her precious cargo onto the pillow on her lap. The nurse hovered long enough to rearrange the tubes and wires, then stepped back to give them some space.

The pure love emanating from the mother's face pierced Joanna's heart. She remembered the moment she first held Charlotte. How proud she'd felt. I made this. This beautiful human being. She came from me. She could remember Steve's face, his joy when they told him that he had a daughter.

Through the hole in the crib, she stroked the baby's hand, not sure who was providing strength for whom. ‘We've got this, little one.'

Tomorrow she would worry about Freddie and Annabelle and custody. Right now, she just wanted to love this precious child.