I’m here to talk to you about last night.’
‘Oh.’
Lauren’s gaze drifted down towards the baby in yellow, and then across to the other. They were identical.
She said, ‘I thought they called you. I thought they told you not to come.’
‘They did,’ Harper smiled, gave a little shrug, ‘but I came anyway. It’s my duty to investigate when there’s been a report of a serious incident. You called 999 at half past four this morning, or thereabouts? The report mentioned an attempted child abduction.’
Mrs Lauren Tranter’s face crumpled. Tears cleaned a path to her chin. ‘I did call.’
Harper waited for her to go on. A machine was beeping in the next bay. The sound of footsteps in the hallway, a door banging.
Awkwardly, Lauren wiped her nose with the back of a hand, getting a bit of wet on the yellow-dressed baby’s arm. ‘But they said it wasn’t real. It didn’t happen. They said I imagined it. I’m so sorry.’
‘It must have been very frightening for you,’ said Harper.
‘Terrifying.’ The word out came out on a sigh. Lauren searched Harper’s face, looking for an answer to some unasked question.
‘You were right to call.’ Harper laid a hand on the younger woman’s arm, not making contact with any part of the baby she held there, but the mother flinched at the touch and the sudden movement shocked the baby, whose eyes flew open, its arms and legs briefly rigid before they slowly drew in again as Harper watched. The baby in green on the other side rubbed the back of its head on its mother’s arm, side to side, yawning and rolling its tongue into a tube. The little eyes remained closed.
‘Sorry,’ said Lauren, ‘I’m a bit jumpy.’
‘Don’t worry. You’ve been through a lot, I get it.’
‘I’m really tired. I didn’t get much sleep, not last night, not since I had them. I’m not complaining though. It’s worth it, right?’
‘Right,’ said Harper, ‘they’re beautiful. When were they born?’
‘Saturday night.’ She nodded to the one in yellow. ‘Morgan was born at 8.17. His little brother came out at 8.21. He’s called Riley.’
‘Lovely,’ said Harper. She scrabbled for a platitude to fill the silence. ‘Well, you’ve certainly got your hands full there.’
Lauren turned her eyes on Harper. ‘Do you have children?’ she asked.
Harper didn’t know why she didn’t answer immediately. All her life she’d been answering immediately, giving the same almost stock response, No, not me, I’m not the maternal type, said in a way that made it clear she didn’t want any more questions. Today was different somehow; Lauren wasn’t making small talk. She wasn’t implying, like some people did, that Harper’s biological clock was all but ticked out. She was asking Do you understand what just happened to me? Standing there in front of Lauren Tranter, so devoid of artifice, not just hoping but needing the answer to be Yes, yes I do, the truth was on her tongue. But she swallowed it.
‘No, not really,’ she said, immediately hearing how stupid that sounded. Not really? What did that mean? Lauren made a small frown but didn’t say anything more. Harper went on, ‘I’ve got a little sister. A lot younger than me. So I guess I sometimes think of her as my kid. But no, I don’t have any children of my own.’
Lauren’s eyebrows went up and she seemed to drift away, unfocussed. Newly etched lines mapped the contours under her eyes, the topography of her recent trauma.
After a moment Harper said, ‘What happened to your wrist?’
The spot of blood on the bandage had grown from the size of a pea to the size of a penny in the time Harper had been standing there.
‘Well, she, the woman, she . . .’ Lauren seemed confused. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did someone hurt you?’
Lauren turned her head towards the window. Across the car park people were shuffling in and out of the big glass doors, needlessly high doors that dwarfed the people below. The doors were opening, shutting, opening, shutting, reflecting the morning sun as they met and flashing, leaving orange spots in Harper’s eyes. Lauren kept her eyes wide open into the blinding light.
‘That man, Dr Gill. He said I did it to myself.’
‘And what do you think, Mrs Tranter?’
‘I think . . . ’ She looked down at the babies and up at the detective sergeant. Big, sad, frightened eyes, streaming tears. ‘I don’t think I can trust what I think right now.’
A beam of the slant west sunshine
Made the wan face almost fair
Lit the blue eyes’ patient wonder
And the rings of pale gold hair
She kissed it on lip and forehead
She kissed it on cheek and chink
And she bared her snow-white bosom
To the lips so pale and thin
FROM The Changeling
BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Ten o’clock, visiting time. From her hospital bed Lauren observed a column of fuzzy colours approaching her and tried to focus. The fuzz resolved into the familiar shape of Patrick. It felt like years had passed since she’d last seen him.
‘My God,’ said Patrick, ‘what have they done to you?’
‘It’s fine, everything’s fine,’ said Lauren, but all that came out were broken sobs, the incoherent hupping yowls of an injured creature. Soon it subsided, trickled to whimpers. He stroked her hair.
‘Shh, lovely,’ said Patrick, keeping his voice low. On the other side of the bay, a jubilant party of assorted family was gathering around Mrs Gooch’s bed. Chairs were pulled across for older Gooches. Two smallish ginger children each possessively gripped ribbons attached to shiny silver balloons that trailed near the ceiling, announcing in bubblegum-pink lettering: It’s a Girl! One of the balloon-bearers stared slack-jawed at Lauren so that the lolly dangling from his open mouth nearly fell out.
‘Shh. I know,’ said Patrick, unaware of the gaping child at his back.
Another version of Lauren would have stared back until the boy looked away. This new, broken Lauren just shut her eyes.
Patrick said, ‘They left a message on my phone, but I didn’t get it until this morning. What happened?’
Lauren couldn’t respond to that immediately. She was floored by another wave of sobbing. A red-haired man – perhaps a new uncle of Mrs Gooch’s baby girl – cheered loudly as
