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 police 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 ofotherness, a sense of not belonging that seems to radiate from him. I quicken my pace.
Further behind me there are shouts, loud and angry, male voices full of protest. Some kind of row breaking out back on the platform. I glance over my shoulder to see the red-and-white shirted football fans held up at the barrier, arguing with the guards – something about tickets – their faces contorted with anger, swigging from cans of lager. The fans shouting, swearing to let them through, their mates joining in the protest, yellow-jacketed platform staff gravitating towards the commotion to calm it by sheer force of numbers.
‘Stand back!’
‘Open the bastard gate then!’
I walk faster, the shouts from the ticket barrier cutting through the air behind me. Another group of young men approach in a loose group from the opposite direction, a dozen of them in their twenties, jeans and tattoos, blue football shirts. Fists aloft as they shout their songs, belligerent voices echoing off the roof of the station. A shouted challenge as they see the opposition fans held up at the ticket barrier, other passengers skittering to the side, backing off to clear a path between the two sets of fans. Gestures and taunts and more swearing, a hurled can arcing through the air, landing with a flatsmackand a spray of lager on the platform.
Mia whimpers at the sudden noise. I obey my instincts. I quicken my pace away from the confrontation, avoiding eye contact and shifting my path away from the men, my whole body tensing against the noise and aggression. With a ferocity I haven’t felt in years, I feel my right hand curling into a fist in the certainty that I will flatten the first one who dares to lay a finger on Mia.
The football fans pass by, a fug of beer breath and sweat and pungent aftershave in their wake.
I check my reflection in another shop window. The thin guy is still following me.
At the far end of the concourse is the sign for the exit: the remainder of the journey that awaits me. A five-minute walk down to Edgware Road tube, Circle line to Notting Hill, change to the Central line then eight stops to South Greenford and the walk up the main road, through the park to my cold, empty house. I’ve done the return trip to the specialist so many times these past five years, I can do it in my sleep now. And until half an hour ago, I thought of little beyond taking that last leg of my journey back from the clinic, sitting on the Tube on autopilot, knowing my own stop without even having to look up. It would be easy to let my feet take me there now, following that familiar route.
Easy, but wrong.
