‘I just wasn’t thinking. That’s all. I was in a world of my own and just didn’t see the lorry.’
‘How can you not have seen it? Stella says it was practically on top of you.’
‘I was in a daze.’
‘Because you were drunk.’
‘I wasn’t drunk. I’d had two bottles of beer.’
I glare at Dr Oliver Roberts across his desk, resenting being made to feel like a naughty schoolchild, although, the truth is, I do feel guilty. I can’t explain that I did see the lorry but somehow didn’t register it. I can still hear the screech of brakes and the sound of shattering glass as the car behind smashed into the lorry’s tail-lights; still remember the painful jolt of my heart as Stella grabbed my shoulder, wrenching me backwards. The lorry driver was furious, but it could have been a lot worse. It was just bad luck that Joni was walking past at the time and saw the whole thing, including us coming out of the pub. And, of course, she couldn’t wait to report back.
Dr Roberts leans back in his chair so that he’s almost horizontal, never taking his cold eyes off me. But whereas a week ago I might have looked away, now I dig my fingernails into my thigh and hold his gaze, refusing him power over me. This is the man who sent Stella back to her abusive stepfather and then failed to recognize her when she presented herself again, seeking validation.
No, I will not be the first to break eye contact.
‘What you need to remember, Hannah, is that my job is to keep you safe. I cannot recommend that you leave here until I believe you’re not a danger to yourself.’
‘It was an accident. I’ve told you. Anyway, you can’t stop me leaving. It’s up to me.’
‘Unless I have reason to believe you pose a threat to your own safety, or the safety of other people. Remember how it was when you first arrived, Hannah? We wouldn’t want to return to that, but we could if we had to.’
The inside of my mouth feels coated with dust as his threat sinks in. He could keep me in here against my will. There was a detention order on me when I was first admitted here. For my own safety. But then, I was in such a state the implications didn’t even register. Now it would be different. Surely he’d need some kind of consent from my next of kin? Mum would never agree to it, I’m sure of it. To have my own agency taken away from me. And neither, surely, would Danny.
I picture Danny sitting opposite me in the bistro, unable even to look at me. When was the last time he held me, without me reaching for him first? When was the last time he called me on the office phone without wanting anything in particular, just to hear my voice? When was the last time I looked at him and thought, My Danny?
I can no longer be sure what Danny would say or do in any given situation. I’m starting to wonder if he was ever ‘my Danny’.
I find Laura in the art room, conferring with Odelle, who has a streak of orange paint across her downy face. They are both scrutinizing a selection of groceries – jam, margarine, a box of herbal tea-bags, a tin of beans, a bar of chocolate – that have been arranged on a tray. Laura steps forward to clasp one of my hands in both of hers.
‘Hannah,’ she says. ‘You must remember, I am always here for you. Any time, day or night.’
‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ I say, feeling like I am stuck in some sort of groundhog day, doomed to justify for the rest of time that momentary impulse that led me to step off the kerb.
‘Never apologize. Never explain,’ says Laura, and smiles.
We remain there like that, hand in hand, for what seems like an age though is probably only a few seconds, until Odelle says, very pointedly, ‘Laura, you said you’d help me with my still life.’
Laura winks at me and lets go of my hand, which suddenly feels very cold.
‘Coming, poppet,’ she says.
As I head for the door I glance at Odelle’s painting, which features the tray of products on one side and on the other a woman who looks a lot like Odelle. Over the woman’s mouth there’s a pattern of small black lines, as if someone has sewn her lips together.
In the day room, Joni looks at me and shakes her head.
‘I thought you were a goner then,’ she says. She’s talking about the lorry.
‘Sorry to disappoint.’
‘You should have asked me,’ hisses Judith across the table. ‘I can think of loads of better ways of doing it than that.’
I get out my laptop, angling the screen away from Joni, who is supervising the morning internet session, so that, if she wants to check what I’m doing, she has to stand up and move her lazy arse over here.
I’d almost forgotten about the list Charlie made on the morning she died and the mysterious WK she was researching. Now I’m determined to make amends.
I type ‘William Kingsley’ into the search box and scroll impatiently until I come to page five and the reports on the two mothers jailed for shaking their babies to death, largely on the evidence of neurologist Dr William Kingsley, only to be sensationally cleared when the evidence was found to be flawed.
Near the bottom of the next page is the link I was prevented from reading before by the untimely arrival of Stella. I click on the headline ‘The Doctors Who Play God’ and wait for the page to load.
Joni keeps glancing over at me, and I can tell she’s been told to keep a careful watch and that makes my fingers tingle with rage, because there’s no need for any of it. I made a mistake. (I saw the lorry yet didn’t see it. Go figure.) On my computer screen, the infuriating circle keeps going round. The WiFi connection in here is pathetic. I’m sure they do that deliberately, to discourage us from spending too long online. Finally, a magazine spread appears on my screen, illustrated with snippets torn out of newspapers about cases where medical staff have been accused of overstepping their remit.
There’s the private fertility expert struck off for removing all the male embryos from the sample of a mother of five sons who is desperate for a daughter. And the parents of a teenager left unable to walk or speak after falling from a balcony who are suing the doctors intent on keeping him alive at all costs. But I don’t read the details of those, because my eye is drawn to a photograph in a newspaper cutting on the bottom-left corner of the page.
The cutting is about Dr William Kingsley, whose evidence helped send two women to jail for murdering their babies.
The photograph is of Oliver Roberts.