Chapter 19

 

April checked her personal iPhone and saw a missed call from her sister. She called Chloe, impatiently waiting while it rang.

“Come on, pick up,” she muttered to herself. It was unusual to see her sister come up as a missed call. Chloe knew not to ring. She’d told her often enough to text first and she would ring her back. On the last ring her sister picked up.

“Chloe, is everything okay?” she blurted.

“Noah’s been admitted to hospital. His lungs are congested so he’s got to be nebulised and have some physio. We’re at Great Ormond Street, is there any chance you can come?”

God, she didn’t need this right now. She couldn’t afford to blow her cover.

“Are you still there?” Chloe asked anxiously.

“Yeah, sorry.  How’s Noah doing?”

“Okay. You know what he’s like, he won’t be kept down for long. He’s tired though, but they’ve started him on steroids so that’ll boost him. When he’s picked up a bit, he’s going to have more physio to clear his chest properly. Will you be able to come?”

She shouldn’t go. Not while she was in the middle of a massive police sting, but wild horses wouldn’t keep her away. Noah was sick and she needed to be there.

“I’ll see if I can get away.”

“Will you?” Chloe exclaimed in a relieved voice, “I can’t wait to see you. Gavin can come in the evenings, but work are funny about too much time off in the day. He’ll be here at the weekend, thank God.”

“Okay, I’ll go now and try and arrange something. I’ll ring you in the morning and let you know which day I can come.”

“That’ll be brilliant. It will be lovely to see you, and Noah will be thrilled too. He’ll perk up when you get here, I bet.”

Her tummy tightened.

“God love him. Give him a big kiss from me and tell him I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“I will do. Love you to the moon and back.”

“Me too.”

April ended the call. It was early days, nobody was suspicious about her, so she would be able to go visit Noah. She could get there and back in time for the gallery cleaning at six, but the problem was she was supposed to be cleaning Dylan’s house during the day. How could she get out of that? She couldn’t use being sick as an excuse, but then manage to clean the gallery. Maybe she could have a full day off. That’s what she’d have to do. Ring Tom, before anyone else and he’d clear her being off. She could go with a diarrhoea bug which would just last a day.

Yes, she’d pull a sicky. Only for a day though, she couldn’t afford any longer.

 

Noah was such a precious little boy. April was his birth mother, and her sister’s husband, Gavin was his genetic father. All it had taken was a basting stick, several months, and Noah had been conceived.

April spent many hours, days and months analysing why she’d agreed to be a surrogate for her sister. If a psychiatrist was to study her and Chloe’s relationship, it wouldn’t take much effort to come to the conclusion that she had an unhealthy desire to compensate for any failings in her sister’s life. As if it was her responsibility to fix them. It stemmed from her mother dying which left her, a young child herself, trying to compensate for things Chloe missed out on.

 

Chloe had been married almost as soon as she left school. She’d got a job in a local department store and soon met Gavin who worked as a delivery driver. They were married within months, boasting about the large family they were going to have. By the time they underwent lengthy fertility investigations, it became apparent Chloe wouldn’t conceive due to a gynaecological medical condition. The doctors tried to be encouraging, saying there was a small chance, but it was unlikely as her fallopian tubes were blocked with endometriosis.

Chloe and Gavin were devastated. Their dream was in shreds, and her sister had taken the news badly. She became depressed and required medication to lift her mood. They didn’t have immediate family so there was nobody else to turn to. April desperately wanted to help and when the first couple of NHS IVF treatments failed, she’d loaned them the money to go privately. The IVF took its toll and Chloe became more and more disheartened. By this time she couldn’t face work as the vast majority of her co-workers were young females and many were on their second and third babies. It all got too much for Chloe and she became even more withdrawn.

An article April read in a GP surgery while she was waiting for a smear test first gave her the idea of becoming a surrogate. It took a month until she approached them both with the idea she would have a baby for them. They’d spent several hours discussing the what-ifs, and the pitfalls, of which there were many, but eventually they came to the decision - it was doable.

And so the process began. It was a bit awkward, but they managed it. She would visit Chloe and Gavin during the fertile period of her cycle each month, and inseminate herself with Gavin’s sperm. She would spend time on her back with her pelvis tilted on a pillow to encourage the sperm to travel. She loved those times laid on the bed with Chloe by her side. It was their time together. They talked about their mother, and April got to the point where she wasn’t sure if their recollections were actually real, or if it was just make-believe. All she knew was, those moments together were special and etched on her mind.

She remembered vividly the time when she did her own test in her flat and it confirmed she was pregnant. It had been a massive surprise as she had been doubtful the insemination would actually work. And once she became accustomed to the idea, another emotion she wasn’t expecting, surfaced; the overwhelming desire to protect the little thing growing inside of her.

The early days flew by, and when she reached fourteen weeks, she took a sabbatical from work for a year. The uneventful pregnancy progressed, and she kept very trim with a healthy diet and regular exercise. It wasn’t a case of concealing the pregnancy; it was more that it wasn’t obvious to anyone.

It was decided between the three of them, they were going to be open about the surrogacy, but not until the baby was much older, then they would have the discussion as a family.

The biggest surprise for April had been how attached she became to Noah during the pregnancy. Becoming emotionally involved was something she hadn’t expected. She’d gone into the arrangements with her eyes wide open, but nothing had prepared her for the maternal feelings she had towards the little baby growing inside her. Despite barely glancing at the scans, and ignoring the little fellow as he kicked continually each evening, well into the night when she wanted to sleep, somehow along the way, she fell in love with him.

The pregnancy had been completely text book, she’d sailed through it. Labour was hard, but Chloe was there, holding her hand, and the joy was immeasurable when Noah had been born.

Keeping him had been a consideration. She’d fleetingly weighed up the option of taking him away and bringing him up as a single parent. But that would mean alienating herself from Chloe and she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Chloe and Gavin were all ready to take this precious little baby and bring him up as theirs, and they could offer all the things she couldn’t. They’d always be there for him. They’d be up with him in the night when he was poorly, proudly there watching each milestone he achieved such as learning to walk and talk, riding a bike and starting school, and eventually see that he grew up into a fine young man. And she would be part of all that, too. It wasn’t like a random family was adopting him and she’d never get to see him. She’d have regular contact with him, and vowed she’d be the best auntie in the world. So the way she saw it was, he’d be such a lucky little boy to have three people that would love him dearly and look out for him.

But the hardest part had been handing her precious little baby over. It was the most difficult thing she’d ever had to do, and it broke her new hormonal, maternal heart. She had held him all night before she parted with him. His little face was etched in her mind; his perfect head, his beautiful blue tiny eyes, and his little pug nose with a layer of sweat as he took his feed. But she knew she had to let Chloe and Gavin bring him up, and forget all about being his mummy.

So she’d walked away, and thrown herself back into the only role she knew. It would all work out for the best, she told herself over and over again. She would grow up being his auntie and had to be content with that. Her focus had always been about being a police officer, anyway. Children had never been on her agenda, she didn’t have time to raise a child, and her track record in the romance department was poor.

 

It was a health visitor that first alerted Chloe that Noah wasn’t developing quite how they anticipated. He didn’t appear to have the co-ordination they would expect. April went with Chloe and Gavin to see the paediatrician, and after numerous tests, Noah was diagnosed with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy. The prognosis wasn’t good. He’d be unlikely to ever walk, or if he did, he would need the aid of a walking frame.

They were all devastated, but if God had any influence in which parents were to have a disabled child, then Chloe and Gavin had been selected for a reason. Noah was given so much love and encouragement. They were completely devoted to him.

The health bods seemed reluctant to offer odds on Noah’s future. The family were supported well by Great Ormond Street Hospital, but Noah’s hips were too far out of position for surgeons to operate in this country. It wasn’t until Noah reached four that the suggestion was made that a surgeon in St Louis Children’s Hospital, Missouri, USA might be able to help.

The lengthy surgery involved a neurosurgical technique to treat the spasticity in the lower limbs. It was explained to them that it involved opening the lower vertebrae to release the spinal cord which contains the neurones of the central nervous system. Neurones, the consultant had explained, were a bundle of nerve fibres, which carried messages between the brain and different areas of the body. During the procedure, electrical stimulation is used to identify and divide the sensory and motor nerves, sort of unscrambling the mixed messages the brain takes to the muscles.

They were warned there were no guarantees. Months, if not years of physiotherapy would be required after the surgery to retrain the legs.

Devastating as the news was, they finally had something to work towards, however, the cost of the surgery made it completely prohibitive.

April only had a few grand of equity in her flat. She’d saved so hard for a deposit to even get a mortgage, and even if she sold it, there wouldn’t have been enough for the treatment and the rehabilitation that would be needed. Chloe would need to stay in the US while Noah underwent his treatment which could take anything from six months to a year.

One night, after a lengthy meeting with the consultant, Chloe came up with the idea she would start a fundraising campaign to try and get the money to facilitate the surgery. The process was slow, and deeply frustrating. April generously donated from her salary, but it quickly became apparent it was a long road ahead. Initially people gave generously at the fund-raising events, but eventually the support became less and less.

Undercover work paid well, but however much she gave, they were far short of their target. The American consultant advised there were no tangible benefits of considering the surgery until after Noah’s fifth birthday. So currently, all they had was time.

And April was determined Noah was going to get the surgery he needed.

It didn’t matter how much it cost.