by T. M. Logan
A second later and she’s out of sight.
An automated female voice comes over the speakers. ‘This train for London Marylebone only. Please take care of the closing doors.’
A handful of new passengers have boarded for the final stretch of the journey, hoisting bags into racks and looking for seats. The train doors slide shut with a hiss of finality. This isn’t supposed to be happening. It’s a mistake, some kind of misunderstanding. I was just going to hold Mia for a few minutes, give Kathryn a moment’s respite, then hand the baby back. I don’t really know how to look after—
Someone is talking to me.
‘Sorry, what?’ I turn to face a thin man in a black beanie hat standing next to my seat. ‘What were you saying?’
The man points a bony finger at the seat Kathryn has just vacated, her rucksack left behind next to it.
‘Is that free?’ He’s holding up all the other passengers trying to move down the carriage but seems oblivious.
‘She just had to make a phone call,’ I say. ‘She’s coming back in a minute. Sorry.’
He stares at me for a moment and then asks the same question of the red-faced businessman at the table opposite, who grunts a reluctant affirmative. The thin man settles himself into the seat, folding his long legs beneath him and taking a laptop out of his rucksack.
The hum of the engine rises as the train begins to move again. Rolling slowly at first, the platform at Seer Green starts to slide by, past a blue-painted steel fence separating the station from the car park beyond, massed ranks of vehicles side by side. Passengers carry bags and clutch tickets as they walk towards the station exit. I catch a glimpse of a couple of men shaking hands, two middle-aged women embracing; a station worker in a high-vis jacket; a man in a parka, a couple of teenagers walking in; a single figure in a raincoat. I stare out of the window, disbelief fogging my thoughts, as if the train might stop at any moment, as if the situation will put itself right if I just wait a few more seconds. The red-faced man across the aisle is glaring at me with undisguised irritation, his brows knitted together. I return his stare with one of my own, and he drops his eyes back to his laptop.
I throw one last look back at the platform. Perhaps Kathryn was meeting someone here. Then my view is blocked by trees as the train angles away from the station, picking up speed. For a split second I think about standing up and pulling the emergency cord before we’ve got too far out of the station. Is it a genuine emergency? Is anyone in danger? What’s the best thing for Mia?
The baby whimpers in my arms.
‘Shh,’ I say in a soft voice, rocking her gently. ‘Did I startle you? Shh, it’s OK.’
Mia settles again and stares up at me with big blue eyes. A long lazy blink and a small smile that makes my heart swell. I’m a calm person; I need to stay calm for the baby’s sake. Mia doesn’t seem to need anything right now, she isn’t crying to be fed or changed or rubbing her eyes for a sleep; she seems happy enough to be held for the time being.
No one else in the carriage seems to be aware of what’s just happened. I am on my own with a stranger’s baby. Where’s the guard or the ticket inspector when you need one? I should find one of them, get them to radio back to the previous station and tell them to keep Kathryn there. The next station’s the end of the line – Marylebone – and I can wait there with Mia until Kathryn comes in on the next train. They run every half hour and I have nothing else in my diary for today, nothing calling me home. I could even offer to get straight onto the next train back to Seer Green. Reunite mother and daughter, put all of this right.
There’s only one problem with all of that, one doubt niggling at the back of my mind: I’m assuming that Kathryn wants to get the little girl back. That she wants to be reunited. That this is all some terrible mistake, a momentary lapse of concentration, an exhausted young mother at the end of her tether. A cry for help, perhaps. Postnatal depression?
But what’s just happened seemed entirely deliberate. Calculated. Planned, almost. And I saw the look on Kathryn’s face as she walked away. A single glance as she hurried down the platform.
I knew that look; I’ve seen it before. A long way from here, many years ago, in a different life.
Fear.
Fear for herself, or for her baby? Fear of what she’d just done, or what she might be about to do?
I scramble to make sense of the fragments I’ve gathered in the last ten minutes. A young mother travelling alone. Bruises on her arm. Phone ringing constantly. A brittle, tearful unease she was struggling to disguise, just beneath the surface. Her child left with a total stranger. There doesn’t seem to be anything accidental about it: she’d done it to protect the child, somehow. And now that child is my responsibility, for the time being, at least.
Taking Mia straight back to her might mean putting her right into harm’s way. Into contact with the father who left Kathryn with those bruises on her arm. Perhaps social services would be able to keep her safe, or perhaps Mia and her mother would end up as two more statistics, two more casualties of a violent, controlling man taking out his rage on a partner who dared to leave him. It’s a depressingly familiar story, as old as marriage itself. But what other choice do I have? It’s not as if I can take Mia home, back to my little house in South Greenford, is it?
I let the thought sit for a moment, like a forbidden taste on my tongue.
Then I dismiss it. Mia has a mother, and she belongs with her.
The train picks up speed as it pushes deeper into north-west London, streets and shops and houses passing by. My phone vibrates with a text and I shift Mia to one arm as I wrestle it out of my handbag.
How you doing? You OK? Xx
Which is Tara’s coded way of asking: how did this morning go with the specialist? Do you want to talk about it?
I put my phone face down on the table. Tara can wait. I look up and see the thin man across the aisle staring at me. As soon as I make eye contact with him, he looks down at his phone again. He’s wearing black fingerless gloves and is holding the phone at a strange angle, almost vertical.
Did he just take a picture of me and the baby? Or did I imagine it?
He shifts in his seat under the weight of my stare, angling the phone away from me. His laptop is open in front of him. There’s something strange about his fingertips, the skin wrinkled and pale. His black beanie cap has ridden up slightly and I notice for the first time that he has no eyebrows at all, the skin above his eyes a strange, mottled-red blank. There’s something weird about him altogether, as if he doesn’t belong here and doesn’t quite know how to act.
I feel my left arm stiffening around Mia’s small body, tucking her in a little closer. Now that we’re alone together, she feels as delicate as porcelain in my arms, as if any bump or jolt might break her perfect skin, fracture her tiny bones. Every stranger turning into a potential threat.
I tell myself to relax. For the next ten minutes at least, there is nothing that is going to hurt her, nothing will happen to her. I’ll take care of her until we get to the next stop – the end of the line – and then find someone responsible, someone in authority, explain what’s happened and make sure Mia’s in safe hands. I’ll do the right thing.
I flip my phone over. I could call 101, ask for the British Transport Police and get them on the case. They’d have officers at Marylebone or nearby, close enough to respond and reunite mother and baby. But – again – that’s assuming that Kathryn actually wants her baby back. Maybe it is postnatal depression, and she was worried she might harm her baby. It would be better to talk to the police in person.
I touch a gentle fingertip to the baby’s cheek in what I hope is a soothing gesture.
‘What are we going to do with you, little one?’
Mia gives me another gummy smile, a little chuckle. There’s something about a baby’s laugh that defies words – something perfect and pure and joyful – this human thing she has only just learned to do, an expression of happiness in its original form.
It has to be the best sound in the world.
She seems unaware, or undisturbed, by her mother’s sudden absence. Perhaps she’ll start to fret and cry soon, whimpering in that way small babies do, but for now she seems calm.
What else could help me to get her back where she belongs? I don’t even know Kathryn’s surname. She has taken her handbag and phone but left the baby’s bag, the bulky white rucksack that’s full of baby stuff. That means something, doesn’t it? That it was deliberate? Another thought strikes me: maybe the baby wasn’t even Kathryn’s in the first place. Had she actually said it was? Did she use the words ‘my baby’ at any point? I think back to our brief exchange. No. She only said ‘Mia’ or ‘her’ – or was it ‘the baby’? Had she taken Mia from someone else? From a nursery, or a hospital, from someone’s house? Snatched her from a pushchair outside a shop, or in the aisle of a supermarket? Then panicked and handed her off to a stranger before she could be caught?
But something about her manner, our brief conversation, makes me think it’s unlikely. There was a familiarity between Kathryn and Mia, a connection that seemed genuine.
I lean over and pick up the rucksack. It’s deceptively heavy and not easy, one-handed, with the baby snug in my other arm, but I manage to hoist it up and put it down next to me. In one of the mesh pockets on the side is a bottle of formula milk, in the other a half-drunk bottle of Diet Coke. I undo the zip and pull the bag open.
At the top of a bundle of baby clothes is a single sheet of A4 paper, folded once. It’s a receipt or delivery note of some kind, a list of baby things, formula milk, bottles, nappies, clothes. I pull it out and frown. The word ‘Ellen’ is written in looping capitals on the bottom half.
I turn the paper over.
The back is blank except for a handful of words scrawled hastily in the centre, in messy black biro.
Please protect Mia
Don’t trust the police
Don’t trust anyone
3
I frown at the sheet of paper in my hand. Read the words a second time, turn the paper over to see if there is anything else on it, anything at all. But it’s just a computer-printed delivery note from a company called BabyCool.com. Nothing else handwritten, only my name on the front and, on the back, those ten words scrawled in biro. Instinctively, I fold the paper in two and check to see if anyone else has seen what I’ve seen. But the businessman is tapping on his laptop and the thin staring man is writing in a small notebook, seemingly oblivious to me and everything else.
Don’t trust anyone
Perhaps paranoia’s a feature of postnatal depression. Is it? I can’t remember what I’ve read. Perhaps Kathryn feared that she might do something to the child herself. Perhaps this is all a cry for help. But not for her safety. For the baby.
It occurs to me that there might be something else inside the backpack. I lay the note on the table and begin taking items out of the bag one at a time, setting them on the small table in front of me. Half a dozen nappies, a packet of wet wipes, a tight roll of plastic nappy sacks, two white cotton sleepsuits, vests, scratch mittens and a tiny knitted woollen hat, three bottles of formula milk made up and a small can of formula powder, half-full. Two folded muslin squares, one white and one yellow. Two dummies, still in their blister pack. Some kind of harness – Baby Bjorn – with a complicated set of straps that I recognise as a baby sling. In the front pocket of the rucksack is a new tube of Sudocrem, a travel packet of tissues and a small bottle of sunblock. Another piece of paper, torn from a notebook, with some kind of daily schedule scribbled on it in the same handwriting as the note I’d found with my name on it. A column of instructions down the left-hand side: 6-7 feed/change, 8.30 nap, 10 feed, 11 nap, 12.30 feed/change, 1 nap, 3 feed, 3.30 nap, 6 bedtime routine, 6.45 feed/bed. A squashy purple octopus with a smiling yellow face, a bell inside that jingles when I take it out of the bag.
Mia’s head turns toward the sound of the bell, hands grasping.
‘You want this?’ I pick up the toy, hold it out to her. ‘The octopus?’
Mia coos and clutches the toy to herself, small mouth closing on a soft fabric tentacle.
I survey the train table, covered with the contents of the rucksack. All the paraphernalia needed to leave the house with a baby. Enough for a day out, perhaps? A second day, at a push. Then what? Maybe this was just as much as Kathryn could carry, as much as she could gather in a hurry and pack into a single bag. But there is nothing else which gives a clue to her identity, her full name or where she lives. Nothing to quickly identify Mia to the authorities, to get her back to her family as soon as possible. The daily schedule is curious and I wonder if it’s been written for my benefit. But she’d not had time to write it in the minutes that I held the baby. Just my name, and that strange message, after we’d first said hello. I’m at a loss to work out why she has chosen me.
The football supporters at the far end of the carriage are singing another song, the words interrupted by hoots of laughter and shouted obscenities and I make a mental note to give them a wide berth when we get off.
People begin to stand up as the train slows, pulling bags from the luggage racks and shrugging on coats and jackets, an air of purpose filling the carriage as the train approaches its final destination. The red-faced man in the pinstripe suit opposite gathers up his possessions into a briefcase, puts on his jacket and hurries down the aisle, barely giving me a second glance. I begin to repack Mia’s bag, putting the spare clothes at the bottom, the formula milk and nappies near the top. One more quick glance at Kathryn’s strange note before I slip it into my handbag and slowly get to my feet, making sure to keep a firm hold on Mia.
How do you put on a rucksack when you’re holding a baby? Everything – every move, every previously simple action – now seems loaded with extra layers of complexity. Laying Mia very gently on the seat, I swing the rucksack up onto my back, then pass my handbag strap over my head, keeping my eyes on Mia the whole time in case she tries to flip herself onto the floor. But the baby simply grins at me, happily kicking her chubby legs like a little frog learning to swim, and I scoop her up again.
‘Come on, you,’ I say softly. ‘Let’s go and find your mummy.’
The strange thin man is still in his seat, scribbling in his notebook in tiny, spidery handwriting. He doesn’t seem to notice any of the activity and doesn’t look up as I pass. He’s dressed entirely in black and dark grey, I notice. Black jeans and Doc Martens, grey sweatshirt and a scuffed black leather jacket. Not a single note of colour; the skin of his face so pale it is almost translucent. Something else strange about him, still nagging at me. Something not quite right.
I step carefully down onto the platform, the air filled with echoing footsteps and thick with diesel exhaust. Marylebone is rich with Victorian red brick, steel girders criss-crossing the glass roof high above. I move away from the train door, look up and down the platform in case Kathryn has somehow managed to get back onto the train at Seer Green and is here right now, searching for her baby, hoping I might catch sight of her rust-coloured jacket moving towards us amid the disembarking travellers. A sea of faces travels down the platform, a group of slow-moving pensioners, a young family on a day trip, shoppers and students and a few suited commuters mixed in. No young women scanning the crowd. No sign of Kathryn.
I look down at the baby in my arms, Mia blinking against the bright light, and begin walking towards the main concourse. At the barrier I reach into my handbag for my ticket, searching awkwardly with my right hand while my left supports Mia. I try to reach into my jacket pocket, just about managing to push down into it with my right hand. Not in there either. Someone tuts loudly in the queue behind me, moving away to another of the ticket barriers. Was it in my trouser pocket? I pat the pockets of my jeans but can’t feel its outline. The guard, a smiling fiftyish woman with short dark hair, comes over and gives Mia a little wave.
Should I tell the guard what’s happened? Or would she just direct me to the nearest poli
ce officer? I’m trying to think of the right words to use but the guard isn’t looking at me, she’s grinning at Mia.
‘Aren’t you a little cutie?’ the woman says, as the baby regards her with slow-blinking blue eyes. ‘Let’s give your mummy a hand, shall we?’
She taps her own pass on the sensor and the grey plastic barrier swings open.
‘Thank you,’ I say, a small bloom of relief in my chest. ‘You’re very kind.’
The guard gives Mia another one-finger wave.
‘Have a lovely day, you two.’
I walk into the main concourse and look for signs to an information point, a ticket office or wherever the station manager might be. Do the British Transport Police have offices in the big stations? I’ve never seen one in Marylebone, but then I’ve never really looked either. In central London it feels like anything that isn’t a stabbing or a terror alert is a long way down the police pecking order. Is this the sort of thing they would deal with on the spot, like an imminent threat to life? Not really.
Reaching the station concourse proper, I catch sight of my reflection in the window of a shop and I’m momentarily disorientated by the shadowy image of myself with a baby tucked into my arm. It’s almost like I’m looking into a parallel life, a parallel universe, where the last round of IVF has worked and I’ve had Richard’s baby. And here I am bringing our daughter home, the wonderful warm little heft of a baby in my arms.
I know that parallel life isn’t real. And yet, here I am, with Mia.
With a jolt, I catch another reflection in the glass. Just behind me, keeping pace with steady strides, black beanie hat on his head. The thin man from the carriage is following me.
4
He’s walking slowly with a strange, spidery gait alongside a handful of other passengers. Pretending to be looking at his phone while he walks. I think of the bruises on Kathryn’s arm. The fear in her eyes. Perhaps this was the boyfriend? Not the broken-nose guy on the phone, but this man? Seeing him among regular passengers just adds to his sense of otherness, a sense of not belonging that seems to radiate from him. I quicken my pace.