"Into this world."
[TEN YEARS AGO.]
[JENNIFER STAMFORD.]
'She has lost a lot of blood. We are doing everything we can. It's good that we've got to her in time and the main thing is the baby's heart rate is strong. I don't want you to worry.'
The young Doctor Bauer's words were left hanging in the air as if someone had turned the volume down on his voice.
'We've sedated her. I am waiting for the senior doctor to attend in case there are any complications but we've stopped the bleeding.'
He waited to see if anyone wanted to say anything. No one did and so he tried again.
'Under these circumstances we don't normally invite parents into the theatre but if the need is there then I am sure this can be arranged.'
He offered the mother a reassuring smile. He could see that she was tired. At thirty two he had started to see enough trauma in the eyes of his patients and family members to know when to hold his tongue and so he stood and waited.
Jane Stamford was an elegant woman.
In her early forties, she was slim, dressed in a matching tweed jacket and skirt with a plain white shirt underneath, open necked and overlaid with a Cartier Jade necklace. Her eyes were blood shot. It was the only sign to indicate that she was hurting in an otherwise serene expression. She fidgeted, her gaze never straying from the glass partition that separated her from her daughter.
Jane Stamford had a title, but she also had a husband who had bought into that title. It had been what some would have called a marriage of convenience. There might have been love there once but that had long since passed and now she was a shell of her former self waiting as always for her husband to respond.
Robert Stamford stood unmoved.
In contrast to his wife he had no watery eyes, nor did he feel anything to indicate that he cared what was happening to his daughter. On the contrary his mind was taken up on a more pressing matter and while Doctor Bauer talked his eyes flitted restlessly down the deserted corridor.
When they had arrived, the woman at the reception desk had spoken of a friend, a woman of similar age to his daughter and that woman, Stamford had guessed, must have been the same girl from the nunnery only where was she?
More to the point was she going to talk?
'Your daughter is strong.' Bauer was saying. 'She is young which is the main thing and after the birth we'll keep her here for a couple of days and then maybe a few weeks convalescing at home.'
Stamford ignored him as he did everyone when he was deep in thought. Money was on his mind. Lots of money. The question was who did he need to give it to on this occasion. In the last scandal that his daughter had been involved in it had been straight forward enough. A donation to the police ball. A hint that a certain chief of police would get Stamford's seal of approval. The matter was dealt with there and then only now, he felt he was missing something.
He frowned.
That damn fool of a son of his.
"It will be fine pops. I've been told of a place that is so away from everything no one will ever find out."
Well they have and now there was a real risk of the tabloids getting their hands on this or worse, one of those sleazy magazines.
He turned his attention back to the doctor, all the while distracted by what he was going to do next.
'So when will we know?'
Stamford looked through the thin pane of glass that separated him from a girl barely old enough to vote lying helplessly on an operating table.
Bauer dropped an eye brow. 'Know what?'
'The sex. When will we know the sex of the baby?'
The gentle manner of Bauer betrayed his Austrian accent. A married man of only a few years he was a kind gentle man who took great pains to make sure he conducted himself with sincerity and compassion at all times.
'Oh we already know,' he said softly. 'But I hope you are able to appreciate that under these circumstances we don't try and say anything until they are born.' He raised another smile trying hard not to sound too uncaring.
But he need not have worried. Not in Stamford's case. It was mere curiosity and nothing more.
He had had high hopes for that daughter of his; he had sent her away to the best schools money could buy and for what?
So she could end up giving birth to a bastard child that could one day inherit his fortune. Only that was never going to happen.
Jennifer Stamford was sleeping now. Her mother desperate to go to her but Stamford kept a firm hold on his wife's arm.
And then from along the corridor more doctors and midwives started to arrive.
It was time. A baby was about to make an entry into this world only who would hold her?
Not his daughter Stamford thought.
Of that he was now certain and while his daughter laid there gently covered in a thin top sheet to keep her warm two words stuck in his mind.
"Plausible deniability."
Success was about taking charge. Success was about manipulating events to your advantage something Stamford was used to doing and doing well. On the way over he had made tentative calls to various people. Doubts as to the whereabouts of his daughter's friend and what she might do only helped to cement his plan.
It didn't do to have regrets. It didn't do to show emotion and once this was all over he would send his daughter away, far away, to America maybe or even Japan.
Yes Japan. He had a good friend in Japan. Someone who would know about respecting another's privacy. Someone who wouldn't ask any questions. Yes that was where she would go – to Japan. To the other side of the world for maybe a few months or even a couple of years until all of this had blown over.
A curtain was now being drawn across the glass partition. A nurse passed. Stamford stopped her and asked if he could talk to one of the doctors. He said it was important.
The same Doctor Bauer appeared. He seemed a little perturbed at the interruption.
'Yes?'
Stamford came straight to the point. It never did to go round the houses on any important matter regardless of the consequences.
'I want you to tell my daughter that her baby died at child birth.'
Bauer didn't understand.
'But sir. Please. There is no reason to believe that there will be any complications. I've already said. It will be a straight forward delivery.'
'I know,' said Stamford. 'Which is why you are going to remove the baby as soon as it is delivered, give it to my wife and when my daughter wakes up you are going to tell her that her child has died.'
Jane Stamford never moved nor did she say a word.
She hated who she had become, a trophy for the man standing next to her. Every ounce of happiness she ever had had been taken away long ago but when you have a title and nothing else what options were there except to sell yourself to the highest bidder.
Bauer tilted his head trying to comprehend what it was he was being asked to do. He wanted to say something but the right words failed him. What was being asked was unethical, it went against everything he had been taught.
Stamford saw his unease and made sure he helped him to understand.
'My daughter suffers from a rare degenerative disorder that makes her incapable of having any feelings towards anyone else. She is constantly on medication for long periods of depression. Under the circumstance it has been agreed with our doctor in England that the best course of action is to lie and state that the baby had simply died.'
There was still confusion etched across the young doctors face and so Stamford made one last point.
'The baby is illegitimate. It is not wanted by either my daughter nor the family. Legal documents have been drawn up by my lawyers transferring custody over to my wife and I with immediate effect. We have not done this lightly but it is for the good of the baby and as such I ask again that my daughter is told her baby has died.'
Doctor Bauer lowered his head. It was the word "lawyers." A horrible word for anyone to hear. It put the fear of god in people and he was no different. He sighed. He had images of law suits not only against him but against the hospital itself.
'I'll see what I can do,' he said and turned away.
Robert Stamford had got his own way as he always did. He felt good in himself. His instruction was going to be adhered to and with that fact now sealed he was happy to acknowledge that his board meeting planned for the afternoon could still go ahead. He turned around and began the long walk back to the car park and his waiting limousine. His wife Jane would stay until the baby had been delivered, she would then make sure all the necessary arrangements were made to keep the child away from his daughter.
Not many people could be so callous but then, Stamford mused, not many people could do what he did which was to run a successful multi million pound business.
In two days time he would be back to sign the relevant adoption papers. At least his daughter was alive, of that she should be thankful for; then maybe one day she could start to get her life back in order.
It was to be a girl, that fact he was told of before he left; a granddaughter but knowing that gave him little comfort.
He left the hospital with a sharp wind blowing in his face, wiping the cobwebs of fatigue from his brow and he felt good about himself.
A job well done.
Now all he had to do was talk to that fool of a son of his.
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Thank you for reading this chapter. I admit that some of these chapters where we look back on Jenny's life have been hard to write. I have tried to be respectful to how she would feel. She didn't ask for any of this to happen to her. Time is a great healer after all.
It is just a case of what will she do with all this time.
Your comments and votes as always very much appreciated and looked forward to.