Page 118 of The Dead Ex

It was coming back now. Outside exercise. The stairs.The agonizing, searing pain.

‘The baby.’ David was sobbing. ‘You’ve lost our baby.’

‘No!’ I screamed.

A nurse took my hand. David was now standing up, moving away from the bed as if he wanted to distance himself from me. There was a policeman too, I suddenly noticed. Awkwardly, he came forward.

‘Unfortunately, Mrs Goudman, the power failure took out the CCTV as well as the lights. But we founda snooker ball in a sock in one of the prisoners’ cells. It matches the injury to your head.’

I tried to absorb this. The snooker table in the leisure area had been my idea. Lots of prisons have them, I’d argued when one of the officers had suggested that the balls could be ‘misused’.

I struggled to sit up. ‘Which prisoner?’ I hissed.

‘Does it matter?’ wept David. ‘We’ve lost our son.’

‘Itwas a boy?’ We’d chosen not to know at the scan. I pummelled the bed with my fists, tears streaming down my face.

‘We had to put you under, dear, while we got him out,’ said the nurse. ‘You were haemorrhaging badly and –’

‘I want to see my son!’

The nurse glanced at David. ‘Your husband thought it was best if he was taken away …’

‘How could you?’

‘How couldyou?’ he roared. His eyes werered. Furious. ‘If you’d transferred to a less dangerous prison when I said, none of this would have happened.’

‘That’s not true. You never suggested that.’

‘Yes I did.’

This wasn’t the first time David had sworn he’d said something when he hadn’t.

‘Whose cell did you find the snooker ball in?’ I demanded.

There was a silence.

‘Tell me!’ I screamed.

‘Zelda Darling,’ said the policeman quietly.‘She’s under arrest.’

Penny is holding my hand as if she’s a friend rather than my solicitor. ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier about this?’

I pull my hand away. ‘Because it’s too painful to talk about.’

‘I get that.’

Has she lost a child, I wonder. It strikes me that I know very little about the personal life of the woman who is trying to stop me getting life myself.

‘Do you know where Zeldais now?’ my solicitor asks.

‘Still in prison, serving time for her attack on me. They extended her sentence.’

Penny writes something down.

‘You think this is relevant?’

‘I don’t know.’ She continues writing. ‘I need to look into it.’