Chapter 5

FIVE

Time seemed to stop in the silence between Joanna and the doctor. ‘Did I not know what? Her condition? What do you mean?'

Dr Doherty stared at her. He was young, she realised. There was something about a white coat that made you assume that the person you were speaking to had seen and done everything before. Like a cloak of experience. For all she knew, this might be the first time he'd had to talk to a relative like this. Everyone had to learn somewhere.

Dr Doherty swallowed. ‘Well, as you're next of kin, I just assumed that you'd know. Charlotte is twenty-eight weeks' pregnant.'

Even sitting down, Joanna felt as if she might keel over. She gripped on to the arm of the chair to keep herself upright. Pregnant? That wasn't possible. ‘Are you sure? Could there have been a mistake?'

He coughed into his fist again, shuffled his feet. ‘Quite sure. The gentleman that called the ambulance informed them of the pregnancy and we've done an ultrasound to check.'

Air rushed in her ears. She felt hot. Then cold. Then hot again. This wasn't happening. It couldn't be. Pregnancy? A coma? Numb with shock, she shook her head at the doctor; her voice seemed to come from somewhere outside her. ‘No, I didn't know that she was pregnant.'

He sat up and looked at her differently now and who could blame him? What kind of mother wouldn't know that her daughter was pregnant ? Why hadn't Charlotte told her?

She bent forwards in her chair, the pain in her chest becoming too much to bear; she couldn't breathe. Dr Doherty crouched down beside her. ‘Are you okay? Just breathe slowly. I'm sorry; it's been quite a shock, I'd imagine.'

Pregnant? Twenty-eight weeks, he'd said. How had Charlotte kept a pregnancy secret for so long? All she could think about was the last time they'd seen each other. The argument in the hallway. How had she not noticed that she was that far pregnant? What had she been wearing? Hadn't they hugged when she'd arrived?

She couldn't remember. When someone is in your life all the time, you don't notice those tiny details, do you? It all merges into one. Unless there's something dramatically different about them – a new haircut, weight loss, different clothes – then you don't really see them at all. They are just them: your daughter, your parents, your husband. ‘How would she have hidden that from me? I see her every week.'

Seeing she wasn't about to black out, Dr Doherty stood and took a step back into professional mode. ‘It's more than possible to hide a pregnancy at six months. Especially a first pregnancy. Even in someone as slim as your daughter.'

She knew that. She herself had taken a long time to develop a noticeable bump when she was pregnant with Charlotte. She'd been desperate for it to be there. It didn't matter how much Steve would tell her that he could see a beautiful round bump, she used to worry that people would just think she'd put on weight. But that didn't explain why . Why would Charlotte not have told her she was pregnant? Were things that bad between them that she didn't want Joanna to know?

She pushed those thoughts away and tried to focus, raising herself back into a sitting position. The pregnancy wasn't what the doctor had actually come to tell her about. She wrapped her arms around herself, cleared her throat, chewed her lip. Wanting to know everything at once, but terrified of the answers. What should she even be asking? ‘When is Charlotte likely to come round? Will she need to be in hospital for a long time?'

Again he pressed his lips together before he spoke. ‘The wound to the back of Charlotte's skull was very deep. We have managed to stop the bleeding, but there is a considerable amount of swelling. We are running a series of tests to ascertain the level of brain function. At the moment, there is very little brain activity, but this is still early days. We need to monitor her closely to watch for any further bleeds on the brain. These first hours are the most important.' He paused, then: ‘You need to prepare yourself that she may not recover.'

Inside the room, the clock ticked. One. Two. Three. Outside, she could hear the rattle of a trolley, voices calling. Dr Doherty was looking at her, waiting for a response. But she didn't understand what he was saying. ‘What do you mean?'

His mouth was a straight line: not smiling, not frowning. ‘Your daughter hit her head at a particularly vulnerable angle. Her injury is extremely dangerous. We can hope that she'll recover, but the chances are quite slim. I just want you to be clear on that.'

This couldn't be right. She was in hospital, she was breathing. Surely they could help her? She squeezed her fists to stop them from trembling. ‘Is there anything else?'

He shook his head. ‘No. At the moment, we just have to wait and give it time for the swelling to go down and monitor how her brain reacts.'

It felt like she was living an episode from a TV hospital drama. He wasn't talking about Charlotte. He couldn't be talking about Charlotte. In a minute, someone was going to shake her awake and this would all be a terrible, terrible dream. ‘Can I stay with her?'

He frowned. ‘It isn't usual for someone to stay on a ward overnight. But you can rest assured that we'll have a nurse one on one with her for as long as it's needed. So you can go home and rest and know that she's being looked after.'

He clearly had no idea what it was like to be a mother. Where else would she be but right by her side? ‘I want to stay with her. I can't leave.'

He looked uncertain. ‘I'll see what the matron thinks. Charlotte is in a private room so it might be that she can ask one of the nurses to set up a bed for you beside her just for tonight if need be.'

If need be? Did he think this was going to end before tonight? Ice in her spine made Joanna shiver, but her face was on fire. ‘Thank you. Can I go to her now?'

‘Of course.' He stood aside to let her pass. ‘We'll keep you informed of any changes.'

Never before had she had to exert so much effort into putting one foot in front of the other to get back to Charlotte's room. The nurse by the side of Charlotte's bed had changed and Joanna could tell by the sympathy on her face that she already knew what she'd been told.

Laying there, slightly raised – face relaxed, no make-up – Charlotte looked far younger than her twenty-two years. Was there ever a point where you really, truly, understood that your child was an adult? What did it take? Starting work? Moving out? Having a child of their own?

Her eyes wandered to the section of the sheet that covered Charlotte's body; her hand fluttered to her own chest. She still couldn't get her head around the idea that she was pregnant and hadn't told her. More than anything, she'd wanted their relationship to be open and honest: had thought it was. Why had Charlotte not told her?

It all came back to him: Freddie. Once Charlotte had started seeing him, the ties that bound their family together had been stretched, loosened. She'd been right about him from the start. Why had no one listened to her? Why hadn't she made them understand? All it seemed to achieve was pushing Charlotte further away. Was this all her fault?

When it had become more obvious that they were properly dating, Joanna had been terrified. Steve had, as usual, sided with their daughter. ‘You just need to trust her, Jo.'

She'd turned from the dishes in the sink to look at him, blithely repairing an old alarm clock at the kitchen table. ‘But he's not good enough for her.'

Twisting two of the wires spilling out of their casing, he'd smiled at her. ‘We don't even know him, Jo. Charlotte says he's nice.'

Sometimes she'd loved his trusting outlook, others it had been exasperating. ‘Of course he seems nice now, he's trying to get her to go out with him. But he's not right for her. She says he's still studying, but it sounds to me like he's living the high life off his family's money while he's playing at being a roadie for the girls' band.'

Steve had waved his screwdriver at her. ‘He's young. When you met me, I was still living with my mum. You don't hold that against me.'

‘That's different.'

‘How is it different?'

She'd turned back to the washing-up and had attacked a stubborn flake of breakfast cereal with the sponge. ‘Because you were working every hour you could to help your mum out as well as save up the deposit for a house. No one gave you life on a silver platter like they do to boys like that.'

She'd heard the scrape of his chair on the floor tiles as he'd come to stand behind her. ‘We don't know that he's like that.'

He'd wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. How could he be so calm? That boy – she knew his type all too well – had no business being anywhere near their precious daughter. Steve might not have seen the danger, but she'd known first hand where this was going. ‘I just know it's going to end in tears.'

He'd nuzzled his nose into the side of her neck. ‘Well, then it's good that she's got us to wipe her face and make it okay again if it does, isn't it?'

Against Steve's advice, she'd tried to make Charlotte see that she shouldn't be spending so much time with him. But she hadn't wanted to hear it. Not even Sally had wanted to listen when, just last week, she'd told her what was happening. And now Joanna was here. Having to wait and see if her precious only child would even live through this.

The nurse finished checking the monitors and slid the file back onto the end of Charlotte's bed. ‘I'm just going to check on the patient next door. Shout if you need me.'

Joanna smiled her thanks. ‘I will.'

Sitting here on her own was awful. She didn't want to call any of her local friends. There was someone she could call. Who cared about Charlotte almost as much as she did. Sally. But would she want to come after the last time they'd spoken?

She reached for Charlotte's hand, holding it in her own, stroking it with her thumb, just as she used to when Charlotte was small. What a mess this all was. Freddie had destroyed their family, destroyed her relationship with her daughter, but she had let it happen. Worse, her attempts to save her daughter had merely pushed her further away.

The last year had been so tough; she'd been so centred on her own grief that she'd handled all of this the wrong way. She closed her eyes and brought her head down so that her forehead rested on the back of Charlotte's hand. ‘My darling girl.' Her voice was just a whisper. ‘Is this all my fault?'