Fiona holds me. ‘It’s okay. Don’t cry, Erin. What happened? How do they know? And what exactly do they know?’
I tell Fiona the whole story from start to finish. How I had received a couple of emails from Roisin but ignored them to start with. Then the one I received the night of Dad’s accident. The photograph Roisin had found. And about our arguments and everything else that has gone on since I have come back to Rossway.
‘I’m sorry, I should have told you at the start,’ I say. ‘I thought I could handle it but it’s all spiralling out of control. And now I’ve told Kerry. I’m scared Roisin is going to do something stupid. Something that will blow this whole thing wide open.’
Fiona hugs me and tells me not to worry. ‘The photograph, what does it prove? That you were pregnant. It doesn’t prove you had the baby.’
‘But she said Mum told her.’ I say, suddenly remembering what Roisin had said. I can feel the panic starting up again.
Fiona thinks for a moment and then speaks calmly. ‘That’s impossible about Mum knowing. If Mum knew, she’d say. I’m certain. Roisin must be making that up. You know what she’s like – she says things out of spite sometimes.’ She pauses again. ‘Okay. So what if she thinks she knows you had the baby? What then? Nothing. That’s where it ends.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You had the baby and then the baby was adopted. That’s what you’ve told Kerry and that’s what Roisin thinks she knows.’ I nod. ‘So she can’t do anything else about it. Under law, she can’t trace the child. It ends there.’
‘But she could cause a hell of a fuss,’ I say. ‘What if she…’
Fiona cuts me off. ‘A bit of tittle tattle from something that happened ten years ago. I don’t think even the residents of Rossway will find that too interesting. It might be a bit of gossip for a day or so but that’s all.’ She smiles at me with confidence.
‘You don’t seem at all worried,’ I say, wishing I could buy into Fiona’s confidence.
‘Because I’m not. You should have told me at the start and then we could have nipped it all in the bud and you wouldn’t have got yourself in this state.’ She gives me another hug. ‘Now, stop with your worrying. We’re safe, Erin. Safe.’
The early-morning rush of emergency appointments and requests for same-day consultations had finally reached a lull.
‘Why don’t you go for your morning break now?’ said Roisin, turning to speak to her colleague. She wanted to be alone at the reception desk. She needed to access the patient records without anyone looking over her shoulder or asking what she was doing.
Her colleague was only too pleased to escape to the staff room for fifteen minutes and, once gone, Roisin quickly logged onto the patient-record system.
She typed in the name ‘Erin Hurley’.
Roisin had accessed them the day after she found the photograph of Erin and Niall. The same photo she’d sent to Erin.
The screen flicked up Erin’s past medical records from when she was born, right up until when she had left to go to live in England. Roisin carefully read the notes again, hoping she had missed something the first time around.
Erin’s words had haunted her for the past few days. Had Roisin’s mam really told Erin to have an abortion? It was unbelievable. Her mam was a GP. She saved lives. She didn’t terminate them. Not only that, but abortion was still illegal in Ireland. Roisin was certain her mother would not do anything to break the law. Diana was a well-known figure in the village, she held a position of responsibility. Breaking the law would only bring public humiliation to her and that was something Diana would avoid at all costs.
And it was this last train of thought that had, time and time again, brought Roisin back to the same place. Diana would want to avoid any sort of scandal and Erin being pregnant at sixteen by Niall would, in itself, bring shame on their family.
The uncomfortable and unanswerable question came trundling back to Roisin. Would her mam have done anything to avoid a scandal, even if it meant breaking the law? Which scandal was the lesser of the two evils? Which one would her mam consider the best option?
There was no mention of the pregnancy on Erin’s records at all. Roisin wondered if Diana had something to do with that. It wouldn’t be so difficult for her mam to change the notes. She could also have arranged for the termination in the UK without anyone knowing. That would tie in with Erin leaving almost immediately after the accident, either to have a termination, which Roisin doubted, or to have the baby and put it up for adoption in England.