Close My Eyes Read Online Free PDF

know. I just know that Dr Rodriguez took your baby to give to someone else,’ Lucy goes on. Her voice is low, but filled with emotion. ‘Mary saw, because she
helped Dr Rodriguez with the delivery. The doctor paid her ten years’ wages for that one birth. The only condition was that she keep quiet.’
    My head feels like a million tiny bombs are exploding inside it. Could Dr Rodriguez really have pretended Beth had died, then paid his staff to keep quiet about it? My mind shrieks that these
are lies and yet, as I look into Lucy O’Donnell’s eyes, my instinct tells me she is sincere.
    I try to focus, to force myself to form a coherent question, a challenge . . .
    What about Beth’s chromosomal abnormality? What about the fact that I saw a picture of our poor dead baby, and Art saw her in the flesh? What about the fact that reputable doctors
don’t risk being struck off to steal babies from healthy, wealthy women?
    The question I ask, however, is not any of these.
    ‘Why are you telling me this?’ My voice is shaking. My whole body is trembling, whether with shock or anger I don’t know. I fix my gaze on Lucy’s anxious, worn face.
‘Why now?’
    ‘I only just found out,’ Lucy says. Her eyes fill with tears as she speaks. ‘My sister . . . Mary . . . she passed away just last month. Cancer. Cancer of the colon. Caught
late, it took her fast, but just before she . . . before the end, she told me what happened . . . what really happened.’ She pauses. I stare at her intently.
    ‘And?’ I say.
    ‘Mary and I were brought up Catholic,’ Lucy goes on, her voice falling to a whisper. ‘Mary said she knew what she’d done was wrong and she couldn’t go to her grave
with such a wicked sin on her conscience. I don’t see why she’d lie to me, and what she told me made sense of so much . . . you know, where the money came for her and Ronnie to pay for
their new place and . . . and . . . that’s what she told me, Mrs Loxley, just that. “Her baby was born alive.” Those were her exact words. She said: “I feel so bad, Lucy, so
bad for that poor lady because they took her baby away and told her the little thing was dead.”’
    My heart is thumping so hard the whole café must be able to hear it. It can’t be true. And yet I want it to be true. I want and I don’t want . . .
    ‘So if . . . if you’re right . . .’ It’s an effort to form the words, to speak them. ‘If what you’re saying is really true, then where is . . . where’s
my . . . my baby now?’
    Lucy’s face creases with sympathy. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry but I don’t know any more than what I just told you. Mary was close to the
end when she told me. She didn’t say much after but, to be honest with you, I don’t think she knew anything else about your baby.’
    ‘But . . .?’ I stop, trying to work out what I’m asking. ‘Why would Dr Rodriguez steal my baby away from me? It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, if someone else
wanted a baby, and they couldn’t have their own, why not adopt or use a surrogate? Why not steal a baby from someone very poor or very young, with no resources?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Lucy offers me a hopeless shrug. ‘Mary said there was just her and the doctor and the anaesthetist in the know, that the doctor handed her the baby while
he sewed you up.’
    My mouth is dry. I take a sip of my water.
    ‘So you’re saying the anaesthetist knew about this as well?’ I try to remember what he looked like, but all I can picture is a pair of bushy eyebrows above a surgical mask.
‘Do you know
his
name?’
    ‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t.’
    I shake my head. ‘Okay . . .’ I hesitate, trying to marshal my thoughts, to get the words right. ‘Okay, I understand why your sister told you, but why are you here, telling me
this?’
    Lucy’s cheeks redden. ‘Well, I didn’t want it on my conscience any more than Mary wanted it on hers and . . . and then . . . Bernard