Jane Elliott - Mummy’s Little Girl - A heart-rending story of abuse, innocence and the desperate race to save a lost child

If any of them saw the fifteen-year-old girl, stumbling along the puddle-ridden pavement with a look of unabated agony on her face, they didn’t stop to help.

Charity Thomson took the lift down from the maternity ward and walked through the clattering corridors of the hospital to the café by the entrance on the ground floor. She could get coffee on the ward, of course, but sometimes you just had to get out of there, away from the stress and the urgency and the shouting. Fifteen minutes of time to herself and she would, she knew, be re-energised and ready to bring a few more souls into the world.

Charity had been a midwife all her working life – thirty years, near enough. In all that time she had never met a colleague who didn’t have some complaint to make about the job – the conditions, the pay, the hours – but Charity had always loved it. There were difficult days, of course; there were deliveries that went wrong, that ended in heartbreak; and she would never be a rich woman. But on the whole Charity felt blessed to be doing what she was doing.

She bought her drink and took a seat on one of the plastic chairs. It was seven in the evening, but the hospital was still busy, and she watched as people rushed in and out of the large main doors – visitors, doctors, patients – all of them creating a throng of activity. Charity sat quietly for five minutes, absorbing it all in a kind of daydream.

It was the sight of the girl that brought her back to her senses. She was standing in the doorway, her clothes sopping wet and her matted black hair stuck to the side of her face. She was pale – deathly pale – and she looked around her as though she was completely lost and confused. Then she doubled over, her hands clutching the side of her belly. She stayed like that for perhaps twenty seconds. When she straightened up, she looked so scared that it caught Charity’s breath.

Charity had been a midwife for long enough to know what those twenty seconds of agony were. She got to her feet and hurried over to where the girl was standing.

‘Come on, love,’ she said, her voice automatically slipping into the kindly bedside manner she used with all pregnant women. ‘Let’s get you upstairs. Can you walk? Best if you do, eh?’

The girl stared at her as though she hadn’t understood a word.

Charity put her arm around the girl’s shoulders and started ushering her in. ‘Look at you,’ she said, carrying on talking brightly. ‘You’re wet through. Sooner we get you out of these clothes and into something dry, the better, eh? Got someone here with you, have you, love? Baby’s father?’

The girl shook her head violently.

‘Mum?’

Again she shook her head. Poor dear, Charity thought. It happened like that sometimes. They walked slowly towards the lift.

On the way up to the maternity ward, Charity took a better look at this strange girl with the matted hair and the soaking wet clothes. She seemed young, and her belly was barely swollen. It wasn’t so uncommon for that to happen – you might not even have known she was pregnant if you hadn’t seen the signs – but Charity couldn’t help wondering how far gone she was. ‘How many months, love?’ she asked as the doors hissed open on to the maternity ward.

‘Five,’ the girl replied hesitantly.

It was all Charity could do not to let the worry show in her face. She held her security card up to the panel by the entrance door and, when it clicked open, hurried the girl through.

‘What’s your name, love?’ she asked.

No reply.

‘How old are you?’

‘S–seventeen,’ the girl stuttered a bit too quickly. It was obviously a lie, but Charity couldn’t worry too much about that just at the moment. Her job was to look after the girl and deliver a desperately premature baby against the odds. Everything else could wait until later.

A nurse was standing at reception. ‘We’re going to need a doctor,’ Charity told her quietly. ‘And make sure there’s room in Special Care.’

The nurse looked at her quizzically.

Five months . Charity mouthed the words silently to the nurse, whose expression immediately changed to one of concern. The midwife nodded meaningfully, and then continued to walk with the girl towards the delivery suite.

Her patient was shaking violently, and Charity knew she wasn’t far off now.

Hayley did not get the chance to hold her baby girl before she was taken away. But she saw her in the hands of the midwife, and she heard the tiny squawk of her little voice. She was so small. So desperately, impossible small – barely larger than the midwife’s hands – and, despite her absolute exhaustion, Hayley felt an overwhelming need to reach out and touch the child. She pushed herself up on to her elbows, but her strength had left her and she could do nothing but look as the baby was placed in a clear Perspex cot and wheeled out of the birthing room.

Then the nice midwife was there, standing by her bed and tightly holding her shaking hand. ‘You can see her in a bit, love. She’s very frail, and we need to take her into Special Care and put her on a respirator. You’re going to have to be very brave, but the doctors will do everything they can to give her the best chance.’

Hayley looked up at her with wide eyes, feeling them brim with tears. She was so kind. Nobody was ever that kind to her, and she was glad that her baby was being looked after by people like that.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Now listen, love,’ the midwife continued. ‘I know you’re not really seventeen. No one here is going to judge you or think the worse of you. All we want to do is look after you and make sure that you and your baby are all right. But we need to know your name, and we need to get in touch with your mum and dad to let them know what’s happened. You do have a mum and dad, don’t you, love?’

Hayley nodded.

‘Good girl.’ The midwife squeezed her hand. ‘Now we don’t have to hurry. I’m going to leave you to rest for half an hour. You need anything at all, you press this button here. When I come back, we’ll go down to Special Care to see your baby, and then we’ll fill in all the pieces of paper that we need to. Then we’ll call your mum and dad. Do you want to do it, or shall I?’

Hayley didn’t answer.

The midwife squeezed her hand. ‘You think about it, love,’ she said with a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’ She squeezed her hand a second time, and then left.

Hayley lay there, alone and confused. In the last hour, her world had changed. For months she had been terrified – terrified of what her parents would say and do if they found out the dirty truth about their daughter; terrified of encountering the boys again. Now it was all different. She was still scared, but scared for a different reason. Scared for her baby. Scared of what would happen when she took her home. Scared of the life she would have.

As these thoughts ran through her head, Hayley wondered whether this was what it was like to be a grown-up.

About five minutes after the midwife had left she summoned up the energy to get out of bed. Her legs felt weak as she steadied herself by the side of her bed, and she was sore from the birth; but she took a couple of tentative steps towards the chair over which her wet clothes had been laid. She took off her stained hospital robes, and with difficulty pulled on the still damp jeans and T-shirt, which were clammy and cold on her skin. Gingerly, she stepped towards the door and out into the corridor.

It was almost midnight, but the maternity ward was still buzzing with activity. Mums in labour walked up and down the corridor, some of them pushing drip stands along with them. Harassed hospital workers rushed in and out of rooms. Nobody paid any attention to a young girl walking unobtrusively past the reception desk and out of the main body of the hospital.