In the months that followed I felt abandoned, like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane when he cried out ‘Eli Eli lama sabachthani?’ Meaning, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ But, like Jesus, I soon began to hear the voice of God, desperation birthing a new understanding of what my true purpose was. I realised that Gabriel’s death wasn’t the end… it was only the beginning.
I put everything into the business and soon SureLife went from strength to strength, my ‘live birth’ rate soon reaching number one in the whole of the North West. Day by day I breathed life into embryos smaller than dust particles, and watched in awe as God knitted them together in their mothers’ wombs. As it is written in the book of Genesis: ‘The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.’ It was then that I really began to understand God’s purpose for me. Like Jesus, my son would also rise from the dead!
When Louisa walked into my consultation room a month later, the living, breathing image of Gwyn, God whispered his blessing into my ear.
‘I impregnated you with my own semen,’ I tell her now, enjoying the look of pure disbelief on her face. Her fear infuses the air around us and I sniff up, inhale the scent, taste it at the back of my throat. ‘I own SureLife, remember. Nobody pays that much attention to what I do. It was easy. I could have had lots of children if I wished. But that was never the plan.’
‘You’re sick, you know that?’ She is shaking, her jaw clenched through the sheer weight of the shock.
‘No, not sick… righteous. I knew the moment I clapped eyes on you that you were the one, that Gwyn lived inside your black soul. Of course I had anticipated a few more failed rounds of IVF before you would agree to a donor, but you were gagging for it, weren’t you? Desperate to have a child regardless of the consequences.’
Her eyes widen. ‘You mean you made the IVF fail on purpose?’
I smile. ‘Of course. I’m the leading fertility expert in the North West, don’t forget. I don’t make mistakes. Especially not with beautifully crafted embryos like yours and your husband’s.’
She falls back against the wall and for a moment I think she’s going to topple over. ‘You said they were poor quality. You said it was unlikely to ever work!’
I suck on my teeth. ‘You know the phrase “Trust me, I’m a doctor”? Well, don’t believe that.’ I laugh at my own wit… clearly I am on a roll.
‘You bastard!’ For a moment I think she is going to fly at me but she obviously thinks better of it. ‘You denied my husband the right to have a child. You’re evil!’
‘Hmm.’ I take a step towards her, lean over and whisper my next words deep into her inner ear. ‘You didn’t exactly fight his corner, now did you?’
As the truth of what I am saying hits home, she puts her hand up to her mouth and heaves. I realise that, as much as I am enjoying this chit-chat, this isn’t why we are here. I hoist Gabriel up into a more comfortable position and hang him over the wall, so he is dangling over the river below. I hate to do it to him, but there isn’t another way.
‘No!’ Her scream makes my ears bleed, my happiness turning to mild irritation as I consider the possibility of a neighbour hearing her dramatics.
‘Quiet! Another sound, and he goes over!’
‘Please… I’ll do anything. Tell me what I can do,’ she whimpers, her pleas now buried underneath a mass of sniffles and snivels. She’s far too emotional… but then again Gwyn always was!
‘Can’t you see your questions are killing my son all over again?’ I glare over at her, my top lip curling up of its own accord. ‘I should have known you couldn’t be trusted with him, Gwyn. You were always too highly strung. I saw the signs this time though, didn’t I? Fool me once, my darling wife, but not twice!’
‘What?’ She looks at me confused. ‘I’d never hurt him!’
I laugh, tighten my grip on Gabriel who hangs limply in my arms. ‘That’s what you said two years ago… when you threw yourself off Jubilee Bridge with Gabriel in your arms!’ Tears stick in my throat, my emotions threatening to erupt. ‘Ironic really, isn’t it, how things come full circle?’
I look on in amusement as her hand flies up to her mouth, sick splaying out between her fingers.
‘Can you stop being so messy? You only have yourself to blame for this!’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ she chokes, her eyes glued to Gabriel, who does look a tad cold. ‘Just don’t throw my baby into the river. I’m begging you.’
I smile, take a moment to ready myself for the final part of my perfectly executed plan.
‘He’s not going in the river. You are!’
‘Please, no, you have to be joking me?’
I glance down at the river, which thunders along at an alarming rate, the smell of algae and wet earth burning the back of my throat. If I jump into the river, I’ll die. Not only will the below-freezing temperature send me into shock, but there’s no riverbank for miles.
‘On the wall now or he goes in! I’m not messing around, Louisa!’
‘I’ll die, it’s too cold.’ My words emerge as a string of panicked sounds. ‘And I can’t even swim!’ As I speak my thoughts aloud, a memory swirls into focus. Doctor Hughes knows I can’t swim. I told him so when he recommended swimming to help implantation on my first round of IVF with SureLife. Oh fuck! This has been his plan all along – to find somebody he could manipulate and discredit, somebody who can’t swim! It’s now blindingly obvious what he’s going to do. He’s going to force me to jump into the river and then he’s going to kidnap my child!
‘You can’t do this.’ I lean my arm against the wall for support, fear surging up into my throat. ‘You’re sick!’ I turn my head to look up at him, his face partly illuminated by the street lamp behind. ‘You won’t get away with this.’
‘Climb up on the wall! Or I will kill him!’
‘Okay, I’m doing it.’ I raise both hands in front of me, knowing I have to think fast if I’m to have any chance of surviving. ‘Just please pull Cory back over the wall and wrap him up. It’s so cold.’ Fiddling around with the tie on my dressing gown, I manage to take it off and throw it down on the floor between us. My hope is that Doctor Hughes will bend down and pick it up, that I’ll then be able to wrestle him to the ground and scream for help. But as my dressing gown hits the concrete, something hard skims across the ground. I look past Hughes, see a solid black shape a metre or so away. Of course! My mobile phone!
My breath feels trapped against my ribcage as I consider what this means. Surely the police will be able to track me down through the phone’s GPS? Surely by now James will have arranged cover at the hospital and gone home? He’ll step through the door, and he’ll find Magda and then he’ll call the police! They will come looking for me, of course they will. Perhaps they are tracking me down right now! After all, they think I’m crazy! I slide my eyes over to Hughes, terrified that he’ll turn and see the phone. He doesn’t seem to have noticed. ‘Wrap Cory up in the dressing gown,’ I try again. ‘If you don’t he’ll die.’
Uncertainty cuts across his eyes. ‘I’ve already told you. His name is Gabriel.’
Another memory flashes in my mind’s eye; the photograph in Doctor Hughes’s office of a woman and baby, his hair as red as a sunset, the mirror image of his mother. Who was the mirror image of me!
‘The picture on your desk…’ I swallow down the terror which laces my words. ‘That was Gwyn and Gabriel?’
‘Yes.’ Doctor Hughes’s eyes glisten with tears and for a moment I think I might have got to him. ‘She… well, she was possessed by demons, kept on telling me Gabriel was too precious for this world. I should have seen the signs, but at the time I was living in Wales and busy setting up SureLife in Chester. I was too busy to notice.’
‘It’s not your fault, you…’