I can just about make out the sound of a siren and I awake with a start.
I open my eyes but my vision is blurred so I don’t recognise what I can make out of my surroundings. Where am I? I rack my brain.
My last memory, it occurs to me with a desolate feeling, is of regaining consciousness on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, an oxygen mask strapped to my face and my brain throbbing like it wanted to burst out of my skull. When I tried to move, I realised I’d been strapped in and my head and neck were tightly packed. It was only when a sharp pain jabbed me in the stomach that, to my horror, I remembered I was pregnant.
‘Please don’t panic,’ said Finn, his words undermined by his terrified expression. He was sitting with me, jammed into a tiny seat with his back to the ambulance’s side.
‘The baby,’ I gasped before I blacked out again.
So it makes sense that I’ve woken up in hospital, I think. ‘You’re safe,’ comes Debbie’s voice. I open my eyes further and through the fog of pain medication I now see her sitting next to my hospital bed. My unborn baby boy is the first thing on my mind. Debbie’s hand is resting on my arm but I yank it away to feel my pregnancy bump. It isn’t as firm as it was. But before I can cry out, she says, ‘He’s okay, darling,’ and smiles, and I feel a warmth radiating from her
that I don’t recognise. ‘You’ve had a caesarean,’ she continues. ‘He’s only a wee thing at three pounds eight ounces, but the doctors say he’s healthy. Finn is with him now in the special-care baby unit.’
‘I want to see him,’ I say groggily.
‘You will, just not yet. You need to rest. I’ll stay with you.’
My body refuses to play ball when I try to shift myself along the bed and prop myself up with my elbow.
‘You need to be careful,’ she warns. ‘Your body has been through trauma. You’re lucky – it could have been worse.’
‘What’s wrong with me?’
She tells me I have two broken ribs and bruising to my spine and head, and then there’s the caesarean. I’ve also got multiple fractures to my wrist and I’m going to need an operation to set it properly in a couple of days. Only then do I spot the plaster cast. ‘But the most important thing is, despite what you did, my grandson is okay,’ she says. ‘He is very lucky.’
I pause to absorb her words. Despite what you did. The sincerity in her timbre suggests she isn’t deliberately apportioning blame, but even if she was, she’d have every right to. I almost killed my son, her grandson. The fact he is still alive has nothing to do with me but the surgeons who have cut him out of me and saved his life. Debbie passes me a tissue from her handbag along with my mobile phone that I’d left on the rim of the loft hatch.
‘The suitcases,’ I ask. ‘Were there bodies in all of them?’
She bristles as if even the thought of it makes her queasy. ‘We don’t know, the police are there now. It’s all just too horrible to contemplate. But please, don’t think about that now. Close your eyes and relax.’
I do as she asks and I’m soon back under a heavy blanket of painkillers.
Later that night I awake again, and after a tearful reunion with Finn, he and a nurse settle me into a
wheelchair and he pushes me along to the neonatal unit to meet our little boy. To begin with, all I can focus on is the plastic incubator shielding him from the dangers of the world – like me – then the beeping and flashing lights of the heart monitor attached to his toe and the tube giving him fluids intravenously. I can barely look at him. He is so, so small, skinny and vulnerable, and I did this to him.
‘He’ll be staying in here for a couple of days while they monitor him,’ Finn explains. ‘But from what they’ve seen so far, the doctors say he’s doing great. They might even let us have skin-to-skin tomorrow.’
I hope Finn didn’t see me recoil at that suggestion. The last thing our fragile baby needs is me anywhere near him. I’m a risk to him. I don’t deserve him.
Later, two police officers appear in my room – a uniformed officer whose name I don’t catch and DS Mark Goodwin, a detective investigating the bodies in the attic who has also been appointed as our family liaison officer. They take my statement and I tell them everything I can remember.
‘What do you know?’ Finn asks them when I have finished.
‘For now,’ says DS Goodwin, ‘all I’m allowed to say is that the deaths are historic and appear to have been deliberate.’
‘Are they all children?’ I say. ‘It’s likely, yes.’
I close my eyes and shake my head. For now, I don’t want to know anything else.
BEDFORDSHIRE POLICE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
Media briefing led by Detective Superintendent Adebayo Okafor
Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. I will begin by reading out a brief statement of the facts as we are aware of them so far. As widely reported, human remains of seven individuals have been located in the attic of a property at 45 High Street, Stewkbury, during renovation work. Today, Scenes of Crime officers remain at that location in their search of the property. Officers will continue to gather evidence from the scene for some time to come. Bones from the remains have been examined by a Home Office pathologist and we can now establish all the victims died between the late 1970s and early 1980s. We can also confirm that all of the victims were children – three male and four female. DNA is being recovered from their remains and will be entered into a database of children who went missing over that time period. I will now open up the floor to questions from members of the press.
Have you identified any of the children yet and have their families been informed?
No, not yet. This won’t be an overnight process as we are working from a time before DNA testing.
Several families have come forward, convinced their children were in that attic. How much longer will they have to wait?
I’m sure that we all want these questions answered, especially those families. However, to establish what happened, we need to go through the procedures with our dedicated team so that no mistakes are made. As soon as we have the information, the families will be informed before anyone else.
Do you know how the children died yet, and was it on the premises?
The cause of deaths will be revealed in the pathologist’s full report which we expect to receive in a fortnight or so and which we will release soon after.
Have the previous occupants of the house been located yet?
We are following up a significant number of leads after a response from both current and former villagers, alongside calls to our dedicated hotline. But as of now, the search continues.
Thanks for your attendance today, a further news conference will be held tomorrow to update you all on the progress of the investigation.
