Little Girl Gone: The can’t-put-it-down psychological thriller. Alexandra Burt

button and the image went fuzzy. I blinked quickly so I wouldn’t miss anything.

      The nurse adjusted the wand and a face came into being. It seemed spooky at first, like a skull mask, but it was the most beautiful face I had ever seen. The lips seemed to pucker, the chin was slightly recessed. What I had known for a while was now visible on a screen; a human being floating inches below my skin.

      I heard the nurse’s voice from far away, pointing out all the major organs. Larynx is fine, cross section of the brain, kidneys, liver, lungs, heart.

      When she said heart, Jack squeezed my hand. Hard.

      Much to Jack’s dismay, I had not only read compulsively on fetal development, I was also obsessing about anything hereditary. Fascinated by a story of a doctor who performed fetal heart surgery on a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, I had found an article that described the intact and fully transparent embryonic sac. And there was the image of a tiny human, no larger than an inch, swimming in amniotic fluid, its head bowed and legs flexed upward.

      I religiously followed Dr Bowers’ advice, took my daily vitamins, got a lot of sleep, didn’t lift anything heavy, but the part about her being in my potentially faulty body was something that pushed me over the edge. I assumed I was unlucky somehow – I had lost my family, had had no luck with relationships in general, romantic or otherwise, I’d bought a used car once and its engine went up in flames two weeks later, neither college nor jobs had ever resulted in a career – so there was some sort of tragic tie to everything I did. My marriage to Jack was different; Jack was his own person – and for all accounts, everything he’d ever touched he’d turned into gold – but this pregnancy was all up to me. This fetus inside of me relied on my body, but what about those things beyond my control? Would I be able to pull this off without a hitch?

      I wasn’t even in my second trimester then, and I knew every congenital heart disease by name, aortic valve stenosis, ventricular septal defect, anomalous pulmonary venous return, and had asked for extensive testing to be done but my obstetrician had declined.

      ‘There is no reason whatsoever to suspect your baby has any kind of hereditary coronary malformation or defect.’ Dr Bowers had taken off his glasses and looked at me as if I was a child asking for a trip to Disneyland. ‘Both you and your husband are healthy and it’s just not justifiable,’ the doctor had said.

      Even before Dr Bowers had declined to do any more tests, Jack had long refused to accompany me to any appointments, had even gone so far as to forbid me to see another specialist. Jack also refused to engage in such conversations and so I tried to silence the worry in my head, kept it in a safe place along with the anxiousness and the panic. I didn’t want to go there then, when we had just seen our baby’s face on the monitor.

      The nurse had just told us everything was fine, the ultrasound was perfect, but I was so anxious that suddenly the baby started doing somersaults inside of me. I wanted to tell Jack about my fears, about my attempts to do everything possible to make sure this baby was going to be healthy.

      ‘A perfectly healthy baby, did you hear that?’ Jack said and stroked my cheek.

      ‘And now the sex of the baby,’ the nurse said and dug deep into my abdomen, ‘if the baby is willing to give up the information, that is. Girl parts look like three lines, boy parts, well, pretty much like you expect them to look. Unfortunately baby’s legs are pulled up and we can’t see anything.’

      ‘I see it, right there, it’s a girl,’ I pointed at the lines I thought were the unmistakable signs of a vulva.

      ‘Don’t get carried away, you’ll be in for a rude awakening if you interpret it yourself,’ Jack said and furrowed his brow. His hand tightened around my hand as if he was trying to squash my enthusiasm.

      The nurse smiled at him. I understood, it was hard not to smile at Jack. All that boyish charm, a father-to-be, eyes blazing, making even her feel special sharing this moment with us, as if nothing mattered more than that Jack was engaged and reassuring.

      ‘A girl,’ I said.

      ‘She’s right, you might as well buy all pink,’ Debra’s voice reached me from afar. ‘I’ll print that profile shot for you.’

      A flurry of images popped into my head; bows and dresses, tea sets and dollhouses, braids and ponytails and nail polish. All my worries had magically disappeared, like footsteps in the sand erased by a single ocean wave, one minute there, then gone.

      After 32 hours of labor, ‘normal for a first time mom’ according to Dr Bowers, I was exhausted and had almost forgotten why I was even there. All I wanted was for the pain to stop and to close my eyes. After four hours of unsuccessful pushing, Dr Bowers ordered a caesarean section.

      When Mia finally came into the world, she was purple and limp. The doctor suctioned her throat and, after what seemed like an eternity, put her on my chest. Wrapped in a flannel blanket, she rested in my arms, and we looked at each other. Even though I had prepared for childbirth, had done Lamaze and infant care and CPR classes, had watched countless births on TV, natural and caesarean, and imagined it a hundred times, this moment still took me by surprise. She was so beautiful and fragile and I felt an overwhelming sense of trepidation, as if I might break her.

      The fact that she was healthy was the biggest miracle to me. Had I really pulled this off? Had I been able to make bones from my bones, flesh from my flesh, a healthy and perfect baby? She looked the part but the whole ten fingers, ten toes thing didn’t make a lot of sense to me. What about her heart, her brain, her lungs? How could I ever be sure she was all right? So much room for error, so much at stake.

      I asked the nurse for the Apgar score and she looked at me puzzled. ‘You have a beautiful baby, she’s perfect in every way, everything is fine.’

      What does she know? What I held in my arms was the product of cell division and multiplication, a process that had begun at a furious rate only minutes after conception. Cells had travelled down the fallopian tube to the uterus. By the end of the first week, a single cell had transformed into millions and into a body big enough to be seen without a microscope. Cells had formed muscles, the circulatory system, the skeleton, the kidneys and the reproductive organs, the nervous system, senses and skin. And the heart had begun beating after three weeks. And now she was here and I was unable to go back and make right what had potentially gone wrong. Rogue cells, unlucky DNA, how could I ever rest assured?

      But then I looked into Mia’s eyes, steel gray and unable to focus, seemingly out of line and slightly crossed, the puffiness of her eyelids making it almost impossible for her to open them wide. And I knew then that she needed me and that I was put on this earth to protect her and for a short moment in time I didn’t worry about her heart.

       Chapter 6

      The very next day, after Jack’s arrived back in town, I’m cleared to be interviewed. The smell of breakfast and coffee still lingers in the air when I hear a forceful knock on the door. By the time I open my eyes, two men in suits have entered the room and introduce themselves as Detective Walter Daniel and Detective Sydney Cameron. Detective Daniel is a large middle-aged man. His bulky body renders him soft, especially around his eyes. He takes out a small notepad with a flip cover and stands beside my bed ready to take notes.

      I start with the day I moved to North Dandry and Jack went to Chicago. I tell them about the locks I had installed, which causes Detective Daniel to nod approvingly.

      When I finish my story with leaving the police precinct, Detective Daniel motions to the younger detective whose name I can no longer remember. The younger detective, very short with feminine hands, gets up and leaves the room. Detective Daniel pulls up a chair and sits next to my bed.

      My head is pounding and I feel like I’m hooked up to a bag of caffeine. I’m trying to remember, and at the same time I’m trying not to say too much. I’ve been watching his face closely and as my story has progressed, his demeanor