PART 3
He had not come to see his son.
I knew that before he opened his mouth, because he did not look at the baby. Not once. He looked at me, and at the room, and at the doctor, in that order.
He had come with an application.
It was in the inside pocket of his jacket and I could see the corner of it, because he had not bothered to put it away properly — he had been holding it in the lift.
An emergency application for custody.
A woman working three jobs. No health cover. No support network — the word is on page two. Who had just driven herself to a hospital, through red lights, at five in the morning, while in labour.
He was going to use the fact that I gave birth alone as evidence that I could not be trusted with the baby.
He made me alone. And then he came to the hospital at twenty past six in the morning to hold it against me.
He had a solicitor waiting in the car park. I found that out later. Somebody had rung him the moment I was admitted, because he still had my name flagged on something at that hospital through the insurance he had cancelled.
The doctor said, very quietly, that I needed to rest and that everybody else needed to leave.
Tobiah said he was the father and was entitled to be there.
And the doctor looked at him for a long time and said: I know.
I did not understand that either. Not for another hour.
About twenty minutes later I was in a wheelchair in the corridor outside the nursery. They had taken my son through for his checks and the blind on the window was down.
There were about eighteen people in that corridor. Midwives, a porter with a trolley of towels, two families waiting to go in and see their own.
And his mother came down it, in her good coat, with a folder.
She had not come to see the baby either.
She got hold of my wrist and she said it loud enough for every single one of them:
Sign it, Alethea. You can’t even afford a car seat.
Nobody moved. A midwife set a clipboard down on the desk.
She did not let go. She leaned in and said:
Just sign. Well?
And I did not look at her.
I was looking past her.
Because the doctor had come out of the nursery doors behind her, and he had stopped dead in the middle of that corridor.
And he was not looking at me.
He was staring straight at Philippa Wrexham.
