else, it’ll level the playing field between us and them. Stop it being quite so asymmetric.”
I consider. “Well, it’ll make Dad happy. And he did say he’d send us money for a lawyer.”
“I don’t think we’ll need it. The solicitors Miles are using are no-win no-fee. If we use someone from the same firm, he thinks they can coordinate to get us both the best payout.”
I nod. I’ve never shared Pete’s qualms about suing a hospital anyway. Like many Brits, he seems to have a love-hate relationship with the National Health Service, both incredibly proud of it in principle and totally despairing and frustrated by it in practice. To me, it seems no different from suing any other large organization that’s made a mistake. But I am a bit surprised that Miles has managed to get Pete to overcome his scruples so quickly.
23
Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibits 16A–C: Emails from (A) Miles Lambert to Peter Riley, (B) Peter Riley to Miles Lambert, and (C) Miles Lambert to Peter Riley.
Hey Pete,
Great to see you last night. Bit of a sore head on the 7:03 this morning (even skipped the run beforehand)…
Just did a quick search for sports lessons for two-year-olds and came across these. They look ace!
May be worth checking out?
Best, Miles
Hi Miles,
Thanks for the links. To be honest we’re pretty snowed under right now, what with Monkey Music, Swim Starz, and SmartyPilates, but I’ll add them to the list for when we have time!
Spoke to Maddie about the lawsuit—we’re in. What do we do next? Speak to your lawyer?
Best, Pete
Pete,
I’ll call you.
M
24
MADDIE
LATER THAT DAY, I get a Facebook request from Lucy. I’m not really into social media—I sometimes dip into it as an alternative to reading before I drift off to sleep, but only for a few minutes; I certainly never manage to get to the bottom of my news feed. But I accept Lucy’s request and spend a few minutes glancing through her posts on my phone while I eat a sandwich at my desk.
The first thing I notice is that she has only thirty-eight friends. I might be a low-frequency user, but even so I’ve managed to collect a couple of hundred—contemporaries from college, girlfriends, colleagues, neighbors, people I’ve met on shoots, even a few clients. It seems incredible that anyone could have such a small social circle. She hasn’t posted much, either—just photographs of David, mostly. Lying on a mat in what looks like a specialist sensory room. In a physiotherapy chair, with the comment, “Trying really hard!” On a breathing ventilator—“Hopefully just a brief trip back to intensive care!” In a ball pool, immobile and a little forlorn, staring at the camera with an anxious expression. With each one, looking at his elfin features, I feel an echo of the same maternal tug I felt when I held his light, slender body in my arms. I think of the last time we took Theo to a ball pool, the exuberance with which he’d flailed his legs, kicking the colored balls into a volcanic blur before deciding to hurl them two at a time at a fair-haired little girl playing in the far corner. We’d had to wade in and forcibly haul him out, his tiny body writhing and kicking so hard in protest that his shirt actually came away in our hands, like podding a broad bean.
I scroll on through the feed, hungry for more images of David. Most of Lucy’s posts aren’t even real posts, just shares of funny videos that already have millions of views, warnings about scammers, or appeals for children with cancer to be sent a thousand Christmas cards. But finally I reach some pictures of David in his cot at home, posted over a year ago. There’s an oxygen tube up his nose—you can just see the cylinder under the cot—and a bundle of wires snaking from under the sheet that suggests the presence of a monitor. He looks so vulnerable and, yes, so like me that something in my heart opens to him. That’s my baby, I think with a sudden stab of longing. My firstborn. From inside my womb. Unexpectedly, I find I’m blinking back tears, right there in our open-plan office. That’s the little boy whose body my body failed. I feel a pang of anguish that this delicate, fair-haired creature will never burrow under a pile of colored balls then erupt through them like a jack-in-the-box, the way Theo did.
And even sadder that I’ll never cuddle him