Free A Silver Lining by Catrin Collier Page B

if the child was a boy they’d name him Evan after her father, and if it was a girl, Isobel after Andrew’s mother.
    But then, before the birth they’d both hoped that the baby would help to heal the rift that had existed between their families ever since she’d run off to London to be with Andrew. Andrew’s parents had never really forgiven her for being a miner’s daughter and six months pregnant with Andrew’s child when they’d married, and her parents had never forgiven Andrew for making her pregnant in the first place.
    She wandered into the inner hall and peeped through the open door of the darkened nursery she and Andrew had lavished a great deal of money, time and trouble on before the baby’s birth –and a room Andrew hadn’t entered since the day she’d carried Edmund into it.
    The baby lay on his back, eyes closed. She listened hard. His breathing was soft, regular. It sounded so ... so normal. If only she hadn’t drunk so much brandy. She was a nurse: she knew full well that alcohol taken in excess in pregnancy leads to complications and birth palsy in infants. And then to go and fall down the stairs of the Graig Hospital in a drunken stupor –and afterwards...
    She closed her eyes tightly, gripped the door and swallowed hard. Little Edmund was the way he was because she’d tried to kill him before he even had a chance of life. She had never thought of him as an individual- a living, breathing being in his own right until Andrew had returned to Pontypridd and talked about the baby they were about to have. So much guilt –hers and hers alone –and poor, innocent Edmund was paying the penalty.
    How could she forgive herself! Not only for what she’d done to Edmund, but for the pain she’d caused Andrew.
    He’d hardly said a word to her beyond the brief exchanges that had to be made since she’d defied him and brought Edmund home from hospital against his express wishes.
    He had pleaded with her to leave the child in the nursery at the hospital until he was old enough to go into an institution –if he lived that long.
    Perhaps it was the brutal honesty of Andrew’s final remark that decided her, activating the stubborn streak she’d inherited from her grandmother. If Edmund was going to have a short life she owed it to him to make it a happy one. She didn’t need her nurse’s training to see just how frail the baby was. His legs and arms were paralysed.
    His oversized head lolled alarmingly on his thin neck.
    And worst of all, the only response he made to her ministrations was ceasing to cry when she fed him.
    Before she brought Edmund home, before the crushing silence had settled between her and Andrew, he’d tried to talk to her about suitable places for children like Edmund.
    He had shown her photographs of institutions that had been set up in converted manor houses with beautiful gardens. But her time in the Graig workhouse had taught her the exact worth of beautiful gardens. Most patients were never allowed to walk in them, or touch the flowers.
    The closest they got to the manicured lawns was to look at them through glass windows.
    The unwritten rule in the medical world was that inmates of institutions had to be kept indoors, segregated from ‘normal’ people lest the sight of them offend and upset. She recalled the rows of utility iron cots in the depressing, green-painted rooms of J ward in the Graig; the listless babies too used to neglect even to whimper, because they knew that crying wouldn’t bring attention.
    She’d tried to make Andrew understand how she felt, taking all the blame squarely on herself, but none of her efforts had lessened his shame at the son they had produced, or his determination to remove all trace of the child from their lives as soon as possible.
    She went into the bedroom they shared and glanced at the alarm clock. Not quite seven. She tiptoed back into the hall, and took one last look into the cot before closing the door.
    Edmund was generally very