The taxi queue moves with painful slowness, a line of black cabs rolling slowly forward, engines rumbling as passengers get in and then pull away towards the junction with Great Central Street.
Come on, come on.
I’m queuing behind a white-haired couple in their seventies who I recognise from the train, the man in a jacket and tie and his wife in a dress and good shoes, dressed for a London day out, maybe a show. The woman turns around and sees me for the first time, her face softening at the sight of Mia.
‘Oh, she isgorgeous.’ She squeezes Mia’s pink-shoed foot. ‘Aren’t you?’
Mia gives her a wide-eyed smile.
‘Come on Mike, let this lady go first.’
‘What?’ her husband says. ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’
He stands aside and gestures for me to go ahead of them.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
A cab pulls up and the white-haired man opens the door for us, allowing me to clamber in. I slam the door shut and check the station exit again: still no sign of the weirdo from the platform.
‘Hi,’ I say to the taxi driver. ‘Where’s the nearest police station?’
‘Which one do you mean?’
‘Whichever’s nearest?’
The driver, a heavy man in his early forties, pushes a button to start the meter running. ‘West End Central, probably.’ He turns slightly in his seat to look at me, his eyes flicking to Mia and then back again. ‘Is everything all right, love?’
‘Fine.’
‘You sure? Is the nipper OK?’
‘We’re both fine,’ I say, shrugging off the rucksack and settling back into the seat. The cab smells of old leather and a sickly vanilla air freshener. ‘Thanks for asking.’
He grunts and puts the cab in gear, the door locks clicking shut as he pulls out into the traffic. I’ve been in a million black cabs before but never with a baby, and can’t work out how to put the seat belt on in a way that would protect both me and her so I just leave it, curling my right hand around Mia’s small head instead. The driver is fast, swooping in and out of gaps in the traffic, and I wish he would slow down.
I turn to look through the rear window twice as the taxi makes its way towards Marylebone Road, looking for any signs that the man is still following me. I don’t see him, or any black cab he might have flagged down. Switching Mia back to my left side to give my right arm a rest, I let myself relax into the worn back seat as the shops and offices pass by on each side. For the first time, it hits me how surreal the situation is: it’s a Tuesday afternoon and I’m in a cab holding a stranger’s child, on my way to a police station. Forty minutes ago I had never met this baby, this little person, and now – for the next few minutes at least – Mia is completely and utterly reliant on me in a way that no one has ever been before. Her life isliterallyin my hands, and it’s wonderful, a joy – terrifying but somehow the greatest privilege, all at the same time.
It’s a little like I imagined it would be to be pregnant and showing, people holding doors open and even giving up their seat for you on the Tube. None of my own pregnancies made it beyond the first trimester.Unexplained infertility, the specialist calls it. A shorthand term for when they’ve done all their tests, and tried all the treatments, and still can’t give a reason.
Perhaps today will be the closest I ever get.
It’s best not to let my mind linger on that for too long.
After half a mile in stop-start traffic, my heartbeat has slowed to something near normal, the adrenaline wearing off as the taxi winds its way along Edgware Road. I think about Kathryn for a moment, go back over what she had said on the train. Her note asked me not to contact the police. No, that wasn’t it. She’d said don’ttrustthe police. But that makes no sense. If she’s running fromhim, from her abusive partner, why avoid police involvement? I take the crumpled note from my handbag again.
Please protect Mia
Don’t trust the police
Don’t trust anyone
Unless her partner’s a police officer himself – could that be what Kathryn meant? The one who kept ringing her, or the guy on the train? Perhaps one’s the ex-husband and the other a new partner. Or maybe they’rebothexes. Kathryn’s an attractive woman. But even if one of them is a policeman, I don’t see what other options I have. It’s not as if I can just take Mia home. Not even for a single night, not even for the afternoon, just to make sure she’s safe, just to—
No. I’m not going to do that, however much I might want to.
I need to work out what to say to the police, how to frame it. Just tell the truth, that’s all I have to do. It’s all Icando. No need to add or change anything. I’ll go into West End Central police station, go to the front desk and find someone in charge, tell them exactly what happened.
I got on at Aylesbury. I was on my way back from the fertility unit at Stoke Mandeville. Kathryn came and sat down at some point after that. I don’t know for sure whether that’s where she got on. But she got off at Seer Green and left the baby with me. I only realised she’d got off as the train was about to pull away. Then I found this note in the baby’s bag. Why didn’t I call someone immediately? I didn’t think it was an emergency. I was going to talk to armed officers at Marylebone but they were called away, so I thought it would be better to take her to the nearest police station.
