Kathryn is walking away down the platform.
2
It takes a second to process what I’m seeing, to make sense of what my eyes are telling me. Is Kathryn suddenly ill? Confused? Is it a prank? Has someone taken her jacket, walked off the train wearing it?
No.
It’s her. Blonde hair swishing from side to side as she marches down the platform, hands thrust deep into the pockets of her jacket, head down as if she doesn’t want to make eye contact with anyone. I lean over to rap on the window as she passes, the glass cold against my knuckles, the move made awkward by the baby on my left side.
‘Hey!’ I shout, sensing other passengers turning towards me. ‘Kathryn! Hey!’
She looks up and our eyes meet for just a second, long enough for me to see the expression on her face, to notice the tears on her cheeks. She mouths a single word.Sorry. Then drops her gaze and hurries on, wiping her eyes and striding down the platform towards the barriers.
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 Kathrynwantsto get the little girl back. That shewantsto 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.
