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 actuallywantsher baby back. Maybe itispostnatal 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 forhersafety. 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?’
