Philippa leant forward, ‘Those questions are leading. She has made it clear she has never hit Rosie.’
DC Miles consulted her notes again, smoothed her fringe. The silence seemed to last forever.
‘Your next-door neighbour Mrs Mira Entwistle told us that she had been round to your house a few days before the incident on October sixteenth, and noticed that Rosie had hurt her wrist.’
‘Yes, she got it trapped in the door.’
‘Tell us how it got trapped in the door.’
‘She and Noah were playing and he slammed it on her hand.’
‘And if we were to speak to Noah, he would remember this would he?’
I looked to Philippa and then held my head in my hands. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I said that, I was the one who slammed her hand in the door by accident. I swear it was a mistake.’
‘So why did you just tell us that Noah did it?’
I started feeling the room’s heat. Sweat stung the torn-at flesh around my thumbnail.
‘I don’t know, I really don’t know. I would never hurt her on purpose. I was trying to keep her away from me because she was screaming at me and flailing around and I didn’t know how to control her and so I stormed out of the bedroom and pulled the door shut, but just as I closed it she put her hand through it.’
‘When you don’t know how to control her, do you think a quick slap might be the answer, to shock her out of it? I mean I would understand it if you felt that way. It can be frustrating when they scream and I imagine you feel pretty desperate.’
‘I feel desperate, yes, I feel so desperate, but I don’t want to slap her.’
‘Okay, right, let’s go right back to 2007, when you took Rosie to A & E for a fracture of the right ulna.’ DC Miles pointed to her right forearm.
My mind flicked back through the years, through the many A & E incidents, back to the Whittington Hospital where we had taken Rosie when she was about eighteen months old. She had woken in the middle of the night screaming, and I had instinctively known she was in pain, though I hadn’t been able to place where in her body.
‘Yes, Rosie broke her arm.’ I looked to Philippa. I couldn’t understand how they knew about that.
‘How did it break?’
‘We’re not sure.’
Philippa shifted in her seat.
‘Two police officers came to speak to you about this, didn’t they?’
My heart skipped a beat. ‘Well, yes, they talked to us at the hospital briefly, but the doctor said it was standard when a baby breaks something. We think she got her arm stuck in the bars of her cot. Is this really relevant?’
I looked to Philippa, whose expression remained unreadable. I began talking again, letting the words tumble out by way of explanation.
‘Peter had thought I was being melodramatic, and kept saying she’d had a bad dream or colic or something, but I knew she was in serious pain and when the X-rays showed a fracture, I felt vindicated.’
‘You felt vindicated when you found out your daughter had broken her arm?’
‘I was devastated for her, obviously, but relieved, quite honestly. I had imagined all sorts of other grim things that she might have had. Her screams were so piercing.’
That night in A & E came back to me in full colour. It had been the most worrying of my life, as they had subjected my baby Rosie to test after test, before finally finding her broken arm. Privately, I had harboured fresh concerns about Kaarina Doubek’s medical records, fretting that she had lied or that the donor clinic had covered up a genetic condition that we were about to discover in Rosie. The police had been the least of our worries. Their attitude to us had been friendly, casual even, their presence barely registering as I had cradled Rosie. Afterwards, we thought nothing of them. I had had no idea it would have been placed on a police report and filed on my records somewhere.
‘Do you see that there seems to be a pattern here? Rosie hurts herself and your explanations are...’ she paused, looked to DC Bennett, and said, ‘a bit rubbish, quite frankly.’
‘When you mention all these things, it sounds bad, I know it does, but seriously, they are totally unrelated, you have to believe me,’ I pleaded, feeling acutely anxious now. I ripped a bit of skin off my thumb and sucked at it, tasting the metal, imagining the red absorbing into my tongue and how it might spread through my body, colouring my thoughts.
‘Do you lie often, Gemma?’
‘I don’t lie. I am not lying.’
‘So, if you’re not lying, that means your daughter is a liar?’
DC Miles’ eyes seemed to have turned from green to red. Blinking it away, I clung to the edge of my chair and breathed deeply, trying to grip onto reality.
‘No, my daughter is not a liar.’
‘So she’s not lying then? You did slap her?’
‘I think she’s got mixed up or something and told you something that isn’t true. I don’t know why she’d do this, I don’t know why, honestly.’
At a desperate loss, I pushed my fingers into my hair and then worried the blood from my thumbnail was smeared onto my temple. I began wiping the side of my face with my fingers, and checking for the blood on my fingers.
‘Sorry, do I have blood on my face?’ I said, showing the left side of my face to Philippa.
‘No, Gemma, you don’t.’
‘My thumb was bleeding and I was worried it...’ I trailed off as I noticed how DC Miles and DC Bennett were looking at me. DC Bennett bent into his notebook and scribbled something down.
‘Are you sure you’re not the one getting mixed up?’ DC Miles asked.
I couldn’t answer her question.
‘You understand why it seems strange to us that we have three unexplained incidents where your daughter has been hurt in your care?’
I felt cold to the bones and my muscles began to quiver. Every scratch of pen was deafening, every creak of a chair raked across my hearing like torture.
‘I don’t know,’ I rasped, barely audible.
‘Are you okay, Gemma? Do you need a glass of water or something?’ DC Miles asked.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know why she’s lying about this.’
‘Would you say you had a close relationship with Rosie?’
‘I love her so much.’
The blue walls of the room seemed to wrap around me, like a much-needed comfort blanket.
‘Yes, of course you do, Gemma. But sometimes things can get out of hand, can’t they?’
‘Sometimes I think she hates me.’
‘Why would she hate you?’ DC Miles’ voice was soft and sympathetic.
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
‘Tell us why, Gemma.’
‘I seem to spend my life feeling guilty about her.’
‘What do you feel guilty about?’
‘Not being good enough. Ever.’ I felt the tears rising.
‘Look, being a mother is tough, I understand that, we can get you and Rosie the help you need.’
Her patronising tone agitated me. ‘I don’t need any help,’ I stated indignantly.
‘There is no shame in it, if it makes things better. But we have to talk about what happened first.’
‘I have told you what happened.’
Philippa spoke up, as though sensing my irritation brewing. ‘I think that Gemma has been very cooperative and told you everything she can.’
DC Miles sighed. ‘Yes, okay. We’ll wrap things up for now. Gemma, I understand today must have been very stressful for you as the implications are huge and I’m concerned about that.’
Her words hit me with a jolt. I resented her patronising tone and the ‘huge implications’ she referred to. I knew DC Miles was not concerned one iota. One by one DC Miles had pushed my buttons, the last of which was the jackpot: fury shot straight out of my mouth, ‘Does it really concern you?’
The mood of the room changed. She sat up straighter, and looked over at DC Bennett, whose hand had stopped writing abruptly.
‘Yes, it does concern me, Gemma.’ DC Miles smiled, calmly blinking her curly eyelashes at me. ‘I have a duty of care to make sure you’re okay and you do seem very upset.’