Page 1 of The Baby Plan

Prologue

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The road was deserted, illuminated only by the beams of her headlights stabbing out, piercing the thick, encompassing darkness. Her mind was a maelstrom of emotion and her cheeks wet with tears. Anger was dominant; at the situation, but mainly at herself, and she realised she was pressing down on the accelerator far too aggressively and needed to slow down. She gently eased the pressure on the pedal.

The dashboard display showed it was just after 11.30p.m. But she wasn’t tired. Running on adrenaline, she was determined to right some wrongs tonight. Even if that resolution hadn’t gone well so far. The past... well, she’d made a lot of mistakes in life. Hurt too many people. It was time she made amends for what she could.

This wasn’t how she’d planned to spend her evening. By this time she’d usually be tucked up in bed, her little girl asleep in her cot at the end of it. But she’d be back home, back with her precious daughter, in a few hours.

She glanced across at her bag on the passenger seat, needing, at a deep level, to triple check the letter was still poking out of it. It had been hard to write. And impossible to send. She’d had it for ages, re-reading it, rewriting it, trying to find the words to ask for forgiveness. In-person, she thought she’d flounder, freeze up or say the wrong thing, that her intentions wouldn’t be believed. And who could be surprised at that? She’d gone between giving up on the whole thing, then gathering her resolve. So, she’d decided to put things down on paper. But afraid of being rejected, she hadn’t been brave enough to send it.

She was going to do this, she reiterated like a mantra. Today. Now. She’d felt she should at least take it in person. Atonement in some way.

She looked back at the road. Christ! She hit the brakes as hard as she could, instinctively yanking the steering wheel and swerving violently to avoid the black cat fleetingly registered in that sliver of a second, dead ahead in her path.

Too much, too late.

The car drove straight off the road and smashed into the barrier.

Chapter 1

Sophie was in such a deep sleep, it took a little while before she came to and realised the telephone was distantly ringing. Her mobile on the nightstand showed 01:17. Sleep fogged and as disorientated as she was, her heart immediately began thumping faster, her body instinctively reacting with fear to a call in the middle of the night.

She stumbled out of the tangle of bedclothes and hurried into the hall, the slight chill of night air unheeded. Rubbing her eyes, she found the handset and answered with a cautious, “Hello?”

“Is that Sophie Perring?” asked a tired, flat female voice.

“Yes.”

“I’m a nurse calling from the Royal Sussex County Hospital.” A pause. “Your sister, Natasha, has been in a car accident.”

Sophie felt herself take a sharp intake of breath. “Is she OK?”

“I’m afraid not, she’s in a very serious condition.” There was another second’s pause before the nurse continued, her matter-of-fact tone tinged now with sympathy, “You should get here as soon as you can.”

“I’m on my way,” Sophie said automatically, already making a mental plan of how to get to the hospital. Now the phone had delivered its crushing news, strangely her heart ceased pounding, an empty iciness freezing it, and her stunned emotions were in place. She felt on the precipice of a vertiginous drop, not daring to feel lest she lose all control and fall. She had to focus on getting to the hospital, to Natasha.

Quickly, Sophie pulled on a pair of jeans and a hoodie onto her small 5'2" frame. She found trainers, then tied back her shoulder-length brown hair. She clumsily grabbed her mobile, purse and car keys and was out of the door only a few minutes after putting down the phone.

She hadn’t visited Natasha in Brighton since her sister had moved down there a couple of years before, and wasn’t familiar with the route. Thankfully the sat nav flawlessly guided her through the ghostly London suburbs and away from the security of her little South Norwood flat. The further coastward she went, the lonelier Sophie became as the sparse number of her fellow nocturnal travellers dwindled to nothing in the dark open countryside; leaving just the odd pair of headlights glaring in the opposite lane. She futilely tried to divert her spiralling panic by wondering what their stories were — happy? Sad? Mundane?

No hour and a half journey had ever taken so long, it felt.

She pulled into a space at random in the largely empty hospital car park, her breath quickening painfully. An irreverent liturgy of ‘Oh Christ, oh Christ,’ filled her thoughts, accompanying each reluctant, queasy step in the walk to the Accident and Emergency Department. She headed in, everything other than the reception desk subconsciously blocked out.

“My sister was brought in a couple of hours ago, her name’s Natasha Perring,” she heard herself blurting out.

Did she imagine the wash of pity flooding the receptionist’s face? Had this woman even got any idea who Natasha was as she replied, “Take a seat love, I’ll send someone over.”

Sophie did as instructed and sat down on a hard, plastic orange chair. She contemplated getting a coffee from the vending machine in the corner both from habit and to occupy herself, but knew it would be dreadful. And perhaps caffeine wouldn’t be the best idea in her current shaky state.

Her foot tapped uncontrollably on the floor. She focused on it intently, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone. Her emotions contained completely within herself.

“Ms Perring?” she heard and looked up. A young female doctor was in front of her, shapeless in ill-fitting scrubs. Her face and eyes too carefully expressionless.

“Yes.”

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