The water pipes rattle, telling me that Lucas is using the bathroom upstairs. I try to summon the most benign expression I can muster but my face is stiff and mask-like. It feels like an impossible thing, to make this horrible situation better.
The pure disbelief – that this really is happening to me, ordinary me – is beginning to pass now. I’ve finally stopped shaking. But every time I look at the baby I’m overwhelmed by an instinct to grab him and just run for my life.
‘Look,’ I say gently, ‘Angel. I think the baby is too hot under all those layers. Can you please let me hold it and help? I’m not going to do anything stupid.’
Angel regards me warily. ‘I wouldn’t.’ She lifts her chin. ‘You have to know that the kid isn’t important to me. It’s Lucas I’m bothered about, alright?’
‘Yes, yes.’ I know I’m nodding a bit too vigorously. ‘I get that … please? Can I? I might be able to settle him.’
Angel pulls in a long suck of breath and then thrusts the baby towards me like an unwanted parcel. I cringe at her lack of gentleness and quickly take hold of him. The baby hesitates, contemplating this new location and then, presumably finding it still isn’t the desired one, continues to wail.
‘It’s OK, little chap,’ I croon gently, looking around.
I need somewhere soft to put him down.
When we had the large kitchen renovated, we made the decision to hang onto a battered old mustard-coloured sofa we’d had since first getting together. It sits at one end of the room and is covered in a fleece blanket. I cross the kitchen and grab the blanket, fashioning it into a mat with one hand, while I hold the tiny boy over my shoulder with the other.
Then I lay him down gently, murmuring the sort of soft nonsense words I used to say to Sam; a time that feels both near and yet very long ago. The baby pauses and for a moment I think it’s me, I’ve performed the magic of making him calm, then the room is filled with a powerful smell.
‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ says Angel holding her wrist delicately towards her nose, her face scrunched. ‘Has it done a shit?’
The baby is now grumbling, rather than giving full-throated cries. I ignore Angel’s theatrical complaints.
‘You just needed a poo, didn’t you?’ I sing-song, ‘and now you feel better, don’t you?’
The little boy stares up at me. His eyes are a dark blue, which might be on the cusp of turning brown. It gives them a look of being bottomless; alien and other.
How am I going to change him? There haven’t been any nappies in this house for years and years. And what about when the child becomes hungry?
He starts to cry again, his little face scrunched in pure misery as I try to unpeel the suit. I’m terrified of hurting him, of being too rough. All the hours I put in with Sam as a baby seem to be for nothing; I have entirely lost that ease with small babies. There is apparently no muscle memory for this practical role. I feel an irrational but powerful disappointment at this.
‘Can you fill the washing up bowl with warm water?’ I say to Angel. ‘And bring me the kitchen towel roll?’
Wrinkling her nose, she moves around the kitchen and mechanically follows instructions, bringing bowl and paper towels to the table. Then she steps back and lights up a cigarette, standing with her smoking arm resting on her other. I will deal with that later, I think, peeling off the white sleepsuit. It all feels so unfamiliar. I have forgotten about bending tiny limbs in and out of clothes and the fear of causing accidental hurt. I used to do this ten times faster, when it was part of my everyday life.
Angel is now pacing the room, darting glances at her phone screen and occasionally mumbling under her breath.
It’s like having a small electrical storm in the kitchen, whirling around me. She positively crackles with a malign energy that makes me instinctively want to hold the baby as close as I can. Would she hurt him? Maybe. I wouldn’t put anything past her right now.
I finally release the small nappy and the smell intensifies. I was right. He’s a boy.
Mustard-coloured shit is smeared up to his belly button, which is still new enough to be swollen with a small scab nestled in the folds. This baby was clearly born very recently. Far too tiny to be away from his mother. Where is his mother?
I quickly check him all over for injury, but, thank God, he seems unharmed. As I then carefully wash around the scrawny little legs and the nub of the penis, he releases a thin stream of urine in a perfect arc I just manage to dodge. This makes Angel laugh – a quick, sharp bark of mirth – and I snap her a look before continuing with my task. The little boy is now hiccupping miserably. I try to fashion a nappy out of clean kitchen towel but it’s hopeless. All I can do is wrap it around his bottom, awkwardly.
‘Does Lucas have any of the baby’s things?’ I ask, but I already know the answer. He arrived with only that coat as far as I could see. A too-big coat and a too-small baby.
‘No,’ says Angel, distractedly, looking again at her phone. ‘We’re just going to have to make the best of it.’ I wonder if she is waiting for a message from someone.
A thought suddenly chills me; maybe they have kidnapped this child and are waiting to talk terms with his parents.
I swallow, trying to quell my queasy stomach. What the hell have I become caught up in? The baby grumbles and I stare down at him, feeling all at sea for a moment until I pull myself together. I have to look after him the best I can. I’m all he’s got tonight.
That’s when I remember my self-indulgent time in the attic the other day. Maybe it was meant to be.
‘Look,’ I say, trying to sound calm but firm. ‘My son’s baby clothes are in the attic. I can find them easily if you’ll let me get them. There might be a bottle there too, which we can at least use to give him a drink of water.’
There’s no ‘might’. I know exactly what’s there because I thought, ‘Why am I keeping this?’ before shoving it back into the bag the other night.
Angel narrows her eyes through a stream of smoke. ‘I don’t want you leaving the room. Can’t you do something else?’
I want to scream in frustration, but I must stay calm. I’m conscious of how odd and unpredictable she is.
‘What exactly do you suggest?’ I say after a moment.
‘I don’t know.’ Angel casts her eyes about the kitchen and spies the towel she used to dry herself with. Then she starts opening cupboards and comes back with a handful of tea towels, which she thrusts at me.
‘Do something with these.’
I’m awash with incredulity now. I can’t help my sharp retort.
‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’ I want to grab this feckless creature and shake her by the shoulders. Breathing heavily, I say, ‘If you want this child to stop crying he is going to need to be clean and comfortable. And he’s very possibly dehydrated. Babies can get sick if they are dehydrated.’
She
