Stolen Child by Laura Elliot Read Free Book Online Page B

squeezed tighter but this thought barely had time to register before the bed was stripped. Nothing there, only the warm imprint of her body. Amanda checked the chart hanging from the bed rail then lifted the phone and asked for the matron. Despite her calm manner, Carla suspected a coded emergency message was being relayed. As the nurse spoke, her experienced glance constantly roved around the room, checking out places where a crazy mother, burdened with baby blues, could have hidden her child. The wardrobe, a drawer in the bedside locker, under the cushions on the armchair.
    Carla leapt to her feet and pulled the cushions to the floor, rushed to the wardrobe and opened her suitcase, spilled her clothes across the bed. ‘She’s not here…can’t you see…she’s not here…’
    Amanda tried to prevent her opening the drawer of her bedside locker but Carla pushed her aside. The matron entered as they struggled. Carla had met her shortly after Isobel was born. Small and sturdy with plump chins and authoritative eyes, she had been smiling then, as everybody had been, and Robert was holding Isobel in his arms, a dazed grin on his face.
    ‘Mrs Gardner, tell me exactly what has happened here.’ Her tone was formal, first-name terms abandoned.
    ‘One of your nurses took my child from her cot without asking my permission. How dare she…? I have to phone my husband.’
    ‘But first, you need to answer my questions.’ The matron’s voice was firm. Isobel’s disappearance was no longer amisunderstanding. It had, according to Matron, become a serious breach of procedure. ‘It’s in all our interests to find Baby Isobel as swiftly as possible so please co-operate with us, Mrs Gardner.’
    The hospital was sealed off and the entire premises would be thoroughly searched. Amanda draped a bed jacket over Carla’s nightdress to cover the milk stains. The police were on their way. Carla had not believed her terror could reach a higher pitch but it clawed more sharply against her chest with every word the matron uttered. Amanda stayed with her until the police arrived. Their bulky shoulders filled the doorway. Uniforms, notebooks, too many people in the ward. They sucked up all the air. She could not breathe if she did not have air but no one was listening. A policewoman sat beside her and probed her with gentle but repetitive questions. How long had she been sleeping? Could she give the exact time she closed her eyes? Did she awaken at any point, disturbed by a sound, alerted by another presence in the room? The most important clues could be hidden in the most basic information. She was an older woman and her motherly tone never wavered when she told Carla to call her by her first name.
    ‘Orla…’ The name seemed to slide from the side of Carla’s mouth. She tried to speak again but everything was shifting, the floor and walls, her words meaningless as she pitched forward into blackness.
    She was lying on the bed, Robert’s face above her when she recovered. Isobel was somewhere in the hospital, he assured her. She wanted to believe him. He was trained in the art of detection but she saw the truth in his eyes, their bleak fear mirroring her own. The search had now been extended beyond the clinic where all the other babies, tiny labels on their arms, were present and correct.
    Carla returned to the armchair by the window and gazed down on the police as they combed the grounds of the clinic. The administration offices, kitchens, bathrooms, each small private ward and the half-finished buildings outside the clinic were being thoroughly checked. The entire staff were being questioned, along with the builders, and all those who visited the clinic during the day.
    Her daughter, tiny and helpless, was lost in the rain. Carla moaned and covered her eyes. Amanda and Orla remained with her, each offering reassurances in their own way. There was, Orla insisted, an established pattern to such behaviour. The woman who took Isobel had