I sobbed as I put my tiny boy into her arms. I knew without having to ask that I had no choice in the matter.
‘What happened?’ Shazia said, when she came back without him. ‘What were you doing, Emily? What do you remember?’
I told her I didn’t know. I told her this again and again, my voice upwelling with panic. What did everyone think I’d done? Why had Janice screamed at me?
‘What’s wrong with Charlie?’ I asked. ‘Is he sick?’
She told me they’d checked him over and he seemed fine. By then I was sobbing again. Whatever it was I’d done, it was serious.
After a while Shazia took my hand and let me into room where we found the psychiatrist who came every morning. There was an unknown man, too, who said he was a social worker. He had huge liquid eyes, and I could see in them that I’d done something wrong, no matter how much he did that one-sided smile people did when they felt bad for you but couldn’t afford to be warm.
Shazia sat me down and told me Janice had found me trying to smother Charlie.
There was an opaque silence. I stared at them, they stared back. And I started to say ‘No,’ when I saw it: Charlie, on my bed, a rectangle of pale blue over his face. My heart stopped as I framed and reframed the image, but there was no editing it. The hands holding the blue rectangle were mine.
The three people in the room watched me. There was a clock with a battery running low, the second hand kicking uselessly between 3 and 4.
I ran through the image once again. Charlie’s face, smiling, then disappearing from view as I lowered a blue rectangle over his face. A cushion? A folded jumper?
I let out a strange sound. It was my pillow.
‘Janice is – she could be right,’ I whispered, incredulous. My life creased beneath my feet. ‘I think – Oh God, no.’
‘Oh God no, what?’ Shazia prompted.
I closed my eyes. ‘I think she’s right.’
‘Are you sure?’ Shazia asked. I opened my eyes. ‘I mean—’
The social worker shot her a look, and she stopped. ‘Just tell us what happened, as and when you remember the details,’ she said, gently.
I thought about it again, about that pillow. Was my intention to smother him? Really? That little boy, who was already the love of my life?
There was a sharp movement in my abdomen, a fire-like pain. That was exactly what my intention had been. The pillow down on his face, so he’d be safe, away from me and this cruel world.
I screamed at them for reducing my medication. I told you I wasn’t ready. I told you!
Shazia somehow got me to sit back down.
We had to go back through it several times. Each time more detail emerged, and each detail was unbearable. I would have done it, if Janice hadn’t walked in. I would have done it.
‘You told me women with this condition don’t hurt their babies,’ I kept saying. ‘You told me I was safe to keep him.’
‘It’s incredibly rare,’ Shazia said, helplessly. ‘And when it has happened, in the past, the mother has never meant it . . .’
‘Of course I didn’t mean it,’ I cried. ‘Oh God, help me. Help me.’
Later, I was taken back to my room, and Charlie was given back to me. He was asleep. One of the nursing assistants stayed in the room and I knew without asking that she wasn’t allowed to leave.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I told my sleeping baby. ‘I love you. I love you more than anything in the world. I love you.’
I wanted to die.
My meds were changed. I slept for two days. When I woke up I called Janice.