‘I have something to ask you both,’ Adela said, composed as she pushed back a damp tendril of hair from her face.
She hesitated and Joyce found herself holding her breath, willing time to stop still. A strange sixth sense came over her.
I know what you’re going to ask.
‘I want you both to please consider adopting her.’
The sudden stillness in the library was crushing, pressing in on Joyce’s temples, her throat, until she felt she couldn’t breathe.
‘S-Sorry,’ Joyce stumbled, stupefied. ‘You want us to do what?’
Adela was gazing at Harry, still holding the baby.
‘I can’t think of two more perfect people. I know you’d raise her with love.’
She looked from Harry to Joyce, and the enormity of what Adela was asking dawned on her.
‘I know it’s a lot to ask.’
‘A lot to ask!’ Joyce gaped. ‘We aren’t even married.’
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘I am desperate.’
Joyce looked to Harry, trying to read his thoughts, but his gaze was fixed on the baby.
‘I can’t raise her myself, you know that,’ Adela went on. ‘An unmarried seventeen-year-old mother? I’d be turned out ofevery boarding house, shunned, vilified. But I can’t give her to strangers either.
‘Please,’ she wept. ‘Please help me. My situation is impossible. I have nowhere else to turn.’ Outside, they heard the crunch of the ambulance tyres on the gravel.
‘Please at least consider it.’
Joyce looked down at the little scrap in Harry’s arms, so raw and unvarnished a person. What should she do? What would anyone do?
One hour later, the ambulance men slammed shut the doors as the vehicle whisked mother and baby away to the nearest hospital to be checked over, with the midwife in attendance. Joyce wanted to go with them, but her friends insisted she and Harry sit down and do that most British of things in a crisis – have a cup of tea.
‘You’re both shattered,’ Evelyn said softly to her and Harry, guiding them inside the closed library.
In the reading room, Annie poured them all tea from a giant brown teapot.
‘Well, that’s a first for me, a birth in a travelling library,’ Evelyn remarked, attempting to make light, but not one of the Secret Society responded.
‘What’ll happen to them?’ Annie asked, her voice splintering the silence. ‘Will they go to a mother-and-baby home?’
‘Is there really no way she can raise her as a single parent?’ Beth ventured, looking round the group.
Jo shook her head. ‘When my sister got divorced, it shocked the whole of Exeter. There’s still people who cross the road when they see her coming! A divorce pales into comparison with daring to raise a child alone.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Trust me, she’ll be a social pariah.’
‘Jo’s right. Sadly,’ Clara said. ‘There’s a single mum in Bethnal Green who gets bricks through her window, for pity’s sake.’
‘Aside from anything, I... I’m not sure she even wants to keep the baby,’ Joyce admitted, keeping secret the disturbing story of the child’s conception. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Then I suppose it’ll have to be some god-awful mother-and-baby home, poor girl,’ Evelyn said.
‘NO!’
The group jumped at the vehemence in Harry’s voice. He’d been quiet for so long, it was almost as though he wasn’t there.
‘Sorry,’ he went on, lowering his voice. ‘But surely not? Joyce, you made a promise to keep her baby safe.’
