Chapter 15
When the taxi pulled back up in front of Savannah’s house, Jo took a moment to collect herself.
She had done this hundreds of times before, knocked on someone’s door hoping to be granted an interview about something very difficult.
But it never got any easier. In fact, she sometimes thought it got harder.
When she was younger, she had been hungrier for the story, less concerned about how her interviewees might feel.
Now, she cared a lot more about people, she worried about doing the right thing and about trying to tread the fine line between public interest and the right to privacy.
As she paid the taxi driver, she could feel the thud of her heart in her chest and the dryness of her mouth.
She tried to run the words of one of her very first news mentors through her mind: ‘People always think they don’t want to talk about difficult things, but they do. They really do. You’ve just got to make them realise that.’
She knocked on the door and waited for it to open.
Savannah’s face registered surprise to see Jo there again. ‘You could have phoned,’ Savannah said, ‘I’d have answered any follow-up questions on the phone, you know.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry to be here again like this.
But I just took a call from my office and they’ve sent me back to see you.
Someone has spoken to another one of our reporters and passed on some information…
’ Jo took a deep breath and broke the news: ‘Savannah, I know this is really hard. Awful. But would it be possible to speak to you about Felix?’
Savannah was still looking Jo directly in the eyes; she didn’t break the look, so Jo saw the change in expression take place. The friendliness, the colour and the relaxed happiness left Savannah’s face almost immediately, to be replaced by a look of shock and hostility.
‘I am so sorry,’ Jo added. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse.
’ Jo was a journalist, yes, but she really, really liked this woman and as a mother, had absolute sympathy for her.
Also, Jo understood that Felix was the clue to Savannah.
The unreachable, untouchable part that had been missing before.
Before this revelation, there was a whole side of this woman that Jo and presumably the public didn’t really understand.
How could someone so striking be single?
Someone so motherly be childless? How could someone so nurturing be alone? Now it all fell into place.
Savannah was a mother who’d lost her child: the worst kind of bereaved, someone living every day with a hurt that would not heal.
Savannah took her eyes from Jo’s face and looked up to see the taxi making a three-point turn in the narrow street and heading off, as instructed by Jo. Best to make it look as if she was sure Savannah would invite her in again, she’d decided.
‘You’re going to miss your train,’ Savannah said in a voice that sounded dry and strained.
‘I know. I’ve already missed it. But I couldn’t possibly have spoken to you about this on the phone.’
‘No.’
For a long moment, Savannah stood on the doorstep looking lost. She gazed past Jo into the distance and seemed to slump, shrink up inside her vibrant outfit. Jo waited, realised she was holding her breath.
‘OK,’ Savannah said finally. ‘Maybe you should come in again.’
Jo didn’t dare make a reply, she knew from experience that even the wrong tone of ‘thank you’ might land her back outside again on the wrong side of a slammed door.
Savannah stood in her sitting room, still looking dazed. Jo kept a distance, didn’t presume to take a seat.
‘How did you find out about this?’ Savannah asked, but not harshly, with some genuine curiosity mixed in with her obvious shock.
‘One of my juniors has a contact in Oxford, I think. The news desk has acted on his tip and done a records search in Alaska. They’ve found the certificates relating to Felix.
I didn’t know this was happening and I’m so sorry,’ Jo added.
‘You’ve been very open and honest with me about the things you wanted to discuss.
I don’t like the way I’m forcing your hand here.
But you’re standing for election and everyone’s interested in you.
Look,’ she went on, gently, ‘I can totally understand why you didn’t want this public, but stories like this have a habit of coming to light. ’
‘He’s not a story,’ Savannah said, voice strained to the verge of tears now. ‘He was my son.’
‘Savannah, I’m so sorry…’ Jo repeated. She was within reach of the little picture on the mantelpiece. ‘Is this him?’ she risked.
Savannah nodded.
‘He’s beautiful.’ Jo looked at the picture more closely and saw that what she’d taken for bright rosy cheeks were in fact cheeks covered with a vibrant rash. She put the frame down gently.
‘Why don’t you sit down… can I make you some tea?’ Jo offered.
‘Maybe—’ Savannah wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘I’ve no idea how to play this— This wasn’t part of the plan.’
‘The interview plan?’ Jo asked and Savannah nodded.
‘Why don’t you tell me a little bit about Felix and what happened and we’ll work out together how to fit it in with the rest of the interview.’ Jo wasn’t being dishonest. ‘I promise I will treat you the way you deserve to be treated about this.’
Green Queen’s dead baby heartache
was, yes, probably going to be the headline and top item of the story, but there were ways of playing it, nuances, other elements she and Savannah had control over. This great big revelation didn’t have to run away with them or be the only story.
‘What tea would you like?’ Jo asked.
‘Just a glass of water, please.’
When they were seated on comfortable chairs in the sunny sitting room, facing one another, Jo gently coaxed the story from her. Savannah took regular sips of water, as if that made it any easier.
She told Jo about moving to Alaska for an important research job, meeting Philippe there, then deciding to have a baby together and succeeding surprisingly quickly.
‘Felix was beautiful to us. Of course he was.’ Savannah couldn’t meet Jo’s eyes very often as she talked. She preferred to settle on the middle distance, on the little picture of her baby, anywhere but on the person asking her these hard questions.
‘But soon after his birth,’ Savannah continued, ‘it was obvious that he wasn’t in good health.
He had terrible eczema, he had bouts of wheeziness, his face would puff up and we couldn’t work out what was causing all these problems. I know much more about it now: multiple allergy syndrome.
But I didn’t know anything then, and the doctors we took him to, time and time again, weren’t much better. ’
‘Eczema is hell on earth for a small child,’ she explained.
Jo, once a nurse, knew this. ‘As soon as he could co-ordinate himself to scratch, that’s what he did.
He would rub his hands up and down against all the sore, weeping patches of skin, rub his legs against the seams of his clothes, zips, cot bars, whatever would give him some relief from that terrible itching.
He would wake up howling with frustration three or four times a night and we’d find him in blood-stained Babygros.
There were open sores on the back of his knees and other folds of his skin that never healed.
‘He had this scary look about him – puffed-up eyes, dry, dry skin; he looked middle-aged. Not like a baby. There was the awful knowledge of pain in his eyes. And something else, something I interpreted as: “why can’t you help me?” That was what I read every time I looked into his eyes.
’ Savannah took another sip to steady herself.
‘He was in and out of hospital,’ she continued. ‘Wet wraps, overnight bandaging. His little hands tied to his bed so scabs would have a chance to form. Dear God, it was inhumane. Not just for him, for me and for Philippe too.
‘I would have done anything, given anything to make him better.’
She took a long drink from the glass, leaving just an inch of water at the bottom.
‘You’re a mother,’ she directed at Jo. ‘You know. You know how much you love and sympathise, empathise, and how much you worry.’
Jo gave a nod.
‘My skin broke out in sympathy. I never got a full night’s sleep, because Felix didn’t.
I was barely rational. Of course I couldn’t go back to my job, Philippe was struggling to cope with his.
Maybe if I’d had some peace of mind, I’d have been able to find out more, do some research, understand what caused his condition, what was making it worse and what might have helped to make him better.
But instead, I was busy all day and most of the night trying to cope with him.
Just trying to exist from one week to the next.
We had good doctors, but they ran out of ideas, which made me feel helpless. ’
Jo heard the gasp in Savannah’s voice, as if she was struggling now to hold back tears.
‘It’s OK,’ she soothed. ‘Just take your time. Shall I bring you more water?’
Savannah nodded.
When Jo was in the kitchen, above the sound of water rushing from the tap, she heard Savannah blow her nose.
Not for the first time, Jo wrestled with misgivings about the ethics of her job.
There was no doubt this was a great story, but it was also a private misery.
A misery she felt uncomfortable intruding on.
But real good did come out of tragic and terrible stories.
She knew that it did. Changes were made, actions were taken – a powerful story had a way of exposing uncomfortable truths.
Savannah would make a great MP, Jo was certain of that.
Maybe this story – harrowing though it would be for Savannah to tell it, for her to see it printed in a paper – would help to get her elected.
She brought the glass through to Savannah, who took a drink and continued.