Close My Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page A

almost completely certain she’s wrong, but that tiny sliver of doubt fractures inside me, shooting poison through every vein.
    I stand up. I fetch my keys and my purse. I don’t have a choice. I have to find out what she believes. And why.
    Sam’s Deli is one of my favourite local shops. It always smells of cheese and smoked meats, while its dark wooden shelves groan with pickles and preserves. I walk through the deli section,
past a shelf of chilli jam and pickled okra and into the café at the back.
    Lucy O’Donnell is sitting at a small round table well apart from the only other people in the room – a gaggle of mums and toddlers by the far wall. A cup of white coffee stands in
front of her. It looks cold and untouched. She looks up and sees me watching her. She blinks rapidly as I walk over. The floor is bare, the tables and chairs are wooden and functional. Pictures of
Italian-American film stars are dotted around the walls. I sit down under Al Pacino and fold my hands in my lap. My heart is racing and my throat feels so dry I’m not sure I can speak.
    Lucy reaches across the table and touches my arm. I pull back.
    ‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asks, as a waiter walks over.
    ‘Just water, thanks,’ I croak.
    The waiter leaves and I look at Lucy. Her eyes are still full of embarrassment and fear.
    ‘Mrs Loxley . . .’ She coughs. ‘Thank you for coming. I’m sorry I didn’t explain properly before. Let me start again.’ Lucy heaves her fake-leather handbag
onto the table between us and rummages inside it for a second. She pulls out a photo of herself and another middle-aged black woman, both smiling at the camera. The second woman is wearing a
nurse’s uniform. ‘That’s my sister, Mary,’ Lucy says, handing me the picture. ‘She attended the birth of your baby eight years ago . . . Eight years ago this
June.’
    I stare at the photo. The second woman is vaguely familiar, but I can’t place her for certain. The time just before the emergency C-section is such a blur. I’d met Dr Rodriguez many
times, of course. But my normal midwife was on holiday when I had the operation and I only met the theatre team as I was being prepared for the anaesthetic. There were five or six people at least,
but I was in such a daze I don’t remember any of them properly.
    Lucy’s brow creases with concern. ‘Don’t you recognize her?’
    For a second I wonder if the woman is simply insane.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ I say. My voice is hoarse. Barely a whisper.
    ‘But she was with you at the Fair Angel when you had your baby.’
    I stare again at the photograph, trying to remember.
    One of the theatre nurses
was
a black woman. I remember her holding my hand as the anaesthetist put me under for the emergency caesarean. I can’t recall her face clearly, though,
and certainly not her name.
    ‘I can’t be sure this is her,’ I say, handing back the photograph.
    Lucy takes it and tucks it absently into her coat pocket. She gives that nervous little cough again. ‘Mary was there. The doctor – Dr Rodriguez – he hired her from an agency .
. . he paid for her to travel from Birmingham, where we live . . .’
    The waiter returns and places my glass of water on the table. A tiny drop splashes onto the wood.
    ‘But there were a lot of other people in the operating theatre,’ I insist. ‘Are you seriously saying they
all
witnessed a baby being born alive then pretended it was
dead?’
    ‘Just the anaesthetist, and Mary,’ Lucy says. ‘Dr Rodriguez got the junior doctor and the other nurses out of the room before the baby was born.’
    ‘How?’ I shake my head. It all sounds ridiculously far-fetched.
    Lucy shrugs. ‘I’m not sure . . . Mary was so ill when she told me . . . but I think he might have given them something . . . made it look like food poisoning.’
    What?
I stare at her, my mind in overdrive. What she is describing would have taken such elaborate planning. ‘Why?’
    ‘I don’t