Chapter 37

THIRTY-SEVEN

FREDDIE

Freddie had popped out to the shop to get some milk and, when he saw his mother's car parked in a visitor bay outside the apartment block, his heart sank. Ever since their conversation a few days ago – when he'd merely floated the idea that he and Charlotte might want to live further away at some point – she'd given him the cold shoulder. He could only imagine what she was saying to Charlotte right now.

But not in his wildest nightmares could he have imagined what he saw when he opened that front door.

Firstly, his mother ran into the hall. ‘She's not getting up.'

‘What?'

She reached out and grabbed his arm. ‘I think she hit her head. She'd not getting up.'

In three strides, he was in the sitting room. The scene there would be etched onto his brain for the rest of his life.

Charlotte was on her back. Her head bent forwards by the corner of the metal cabinet on their far wall. Beneath her, blood was pooling around her shoulders.

He was next to her in less than a second. ‘Charlotte. Baby, can you hear me?' He turned back to his mother. ‘Have you called an ambulance?'

She didn't move, maybe in shock. ‘I didn't mean to?—'

‘Have you called an ambulance?' He screamed at her this time. Couldn't she see how serious this was?

‘No. I?—'

He didn't wait for her to finish. He snatched up Charlotte's phone on the table, realised it was dead, then fumbled in his jacket pocket for his own. ‘Ambulance please. It's urgent. My girlfriend is unconscious. Bleeding.'

He listened to the instructions on the other end of the phone, reported back to the call handler who promised him that an ambulance would be with him soon. Yes she was breathing. No she wasn't conscious. Yes he could roll up his jacket and try to staunch the blood.

While they waited the longest twenty minutes of his life for an ambulance, he tried to get his mother to tell him what had happened. She wasn't making a huge amount of sense. ‘I was just talking to her. She was so angry.'

Cold realisation trickled down his spine. ‘Did you push her? Did you push Charlotte?'

His mother's eyes were wild. ‘She was shouting at me. Told me I wasn't going to control her child's life like I controlled yours. I just wanted to stop her shouting.'

Freddie was cradling Charlotte's head, trying not to move her neck. The blood had stopped but she still wasn't responding to him calling her name. He screamed at his mother. ‘What have you done?'

Something clicked in her then. ‘I have to go. You tell them it was an accident. I can't be here. You have to protect me, Freddie. Don't tell them I was here.'

She was gone before the police and then ambulance arrived. She wasn't there when the police asked him to come with them. At the police station, he'd called the family lawyer to be with him while he was being interviewed.

At no point did he mention his mother.