Constance

‘What’ll we do?’ He was deferring to her now, slightly in awe of her because she knew more than he did. She even knew how to lift and hold the baby close against her shoulder, with one hand cupping its head.

Businesslike, Kathy answered as she knelt and rocked the bundle, ‘We’ll have to call the police. And an ambulance.’

‘Well. Yeah. There’s a phone box up on Weir Road.’

‘We can’t go all the way up there. It’s an emergency. We’ll have to knock on someone’s door. Big houses like these, they’ve probably all got phones.’ She glanced up at the house, but there were still no lights. ‘Next door, there’s someone in. Go on, then.’

‘Just ring their bell, you mean, and say we’ve found a baby?’

‘Yes,’ she shouted at him.

A displeased man came to the door in his slippers, and behind him a woman in a nylon housecoat peered into the street. Mike had hardly finished his sentence before the woman brushed past both of them and ran round to the other garden. She reappeared with the brown bag in her hands, and with Kathy still cradling the baby. Kathy’s eyes were very bright and wide and there were ladders at both of her knees from where she had knelt in the gravel.

‘Graham, ring the police and say what’s happened. Come in here, love. Let’s have a look at the poor mite.’

The two women went into the front room and bent down together. They laid the baby on the cushions of the settee and unwrapped the blanket. The crying had stopped; now it just lay still. Underneath it was dressed in nothing but a tiny yellow cardigan and a dingy piece of towel secured with a safety pin. Its limbs were mottled and drawn up close to its body. The woman unpinned the improvised nappy.

‘It’s a little girl,’ Kathy whispered. Mike caught a glimpse of a thick purple-grey stump where its belly-button should be, and quickly looked away. There was an upright piano against the opposite wall, with framed photographs arranged on the lid. A picture of the Queen in a tiara and a blue sash and the Duke of Edinburgh in naval uniform hung above it.

‘What’s this?’ the woman said. She pointed, and Kathy saw the glint of something pinned to the blanket.

It was a little pendant of marcasites with a rod and a tiny screw fastening for a pierced ear.

‘It’s an earring.’

As she lifted it, Kathy’s eyes filled up with sudden hot tears.

Before she said goodbye, before she pushed the bag into the hedge, the baby’s mother must have fixed her earring to the blanket as a memento. Perhaps at this very minute she was holding its pair, and crying for her lost daughter.

It was the saddest thing Kathy had ever imagined.

The woman touched her shoulder.

‘You just don’t know, do you? About people’s lives?’

She hurried away and came back with a folded terry nappy and a white shawl.

‘I keep these here for when my Sandra brings her little one round. Mind you, she’s out of nappies now.’ Her tongue clicked. ‘Baby’s cold, isn’t she? Out in the night like that. Let’s get her wrapped up. I’m going to put the kettle on for a hot-water bottle, try to warm her up.’

‘I’ll hold her while you do it.’ Kathy was using a voice Mike hadn’t heard before. It didn’t allow for contradiction.

‘Slip her inside your cardie and hold her against your skin. You know, for body warmth.’

Her husband cleared his throat and looked away, and Mike studied the royal photograph more intently.

‘Police ought to be here any minute now,’ the man muttered. He went to the window and looped back the curtain so he could see into the street. Before the woman came back with the hot-water bottle, the blue light of a police car was flashing beyond the privet hedge. They heard the shrilling of an ambulance bell and then the room filled up with men in glinting uniforms. One of them took the baby out of Kathy’s arms and there was nothing left for her to do but watch as they prepared to take the baby away.

‘Well done, love,’ the ambulance man said to her. ‘The nurses will give her a bottle and warm her up and she’ll be as right as rain.’

A few minutes later, the ambulance had driven the baby away.

Kathy sat on the sofa with her knees and her ankles pressed very close together. She was shivering a little. Mike sat beside her and held her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice him.

The woman told her, ‘She’ll be fine, dear. You heard what the ambulance men said.’

Kathy nodded and stared at the floor. The brown bag along with the yellow cardigan, the blanket, the damp towel and the single earring lay at the policeman’s feet. With a cup of tea balanced on the arm of his chair, he was waiting to take their statements. His partner sat opposite them and their two caps were placed side by side on the piano stool.

‘We were just walking home from the pictures,’ Mike said.

‘You were walking past and you heard a cry?’

‘We weren’t walking. We’d stopped.’

‘On the pavement?’

‘Well, no. We’d gone into next-door’s garden. Just for a minute. Didn’t seem as though there was anyone in.’

The policeman looked at him. ‘Let’s see. You’d slipped behind the hedge for a kiss and a cuddle?’

Kathy blushed crimson.

Mike said, ‘No. Um, yes…’

‘It’s all right, son. It’s not against the law, David, is it?’

‘Wasn’t in my day.’ The other constable winked.

‘Did you see anyone?’

Kathy and Mike shook their heads. The street had been deserted, they were both sure of that. It had been so quiet, it was as if they were the only two people in the world.

‘Then we heard this crying. I thought it was a cat.’

‘I didn’t,’ Kathy said. ‘I knew what it was straight off.’ She chewed at the corner of her thumbnail. ‘Will you find her mother?’

‘We’ll do our best to get her to come forward. She’ll be needing medical attention, for one thing. That baby’s no more than a few hours old. But she’ll be running the risk of prosecution if she does, and that could mean up to five years in prison, depending on the circumstances. So they don’t often change their minds, in my experience.’

‘They? Not often?’ Kathy repeated.

‘It’s not quite the first time I’ve seen an abandoned newborn, let’s say.’ He put his pen away and looked at his watch. ‘That’s it, then. Back to work, Dave. Thanks for the cuppa.’

When Kathy heard it was ten past eleven her hands flew up to her mouth.

‘Oh no. My dad’ll kill me,’ she gasped. ‘My mum will be all right about it, though, when I tell her what’s happened.’

‘I’ll be there. I’ll make sure you don’t get into trouble,’ Mike said. But as Kathy turned her head to him he saw that there was a different look in her eyes. Something had changed tonight; she had seen something to do with the baby that he didn’t quite understand.

In a small, clear voice she said to him, ‘I’ll be fine. You just go back to your place.’