heartbeat quickens. Surely, they won’t just let me go? But then I’d have to leave the baby here with them. The two thoughts collide unpleasantly.
As if sensing this, Angel says, ‘We’ll keep the baby here.’ She glances at the wriggling child in my arms and says, ‘You know we don’t want it to come to any harm.’
The open-ended way she says this is chilling and I realize I’m holding the baby too tightly. He squirms.
I’m grateful for the distraction of the bottle, still rattling in the pan. The water in the kettle must be cool enough now.
‘I need some help with this,’ I say curtly.
Lucas looks at me for a moment. I force myself to meet his eyes, which are the same golden-toffee colour as his sister’s, thickly fringed with black lashes. I realize, belatedly, that he is quite beautiful, despite the hollowness of his eyes and sallow complexion. Much better looking than his sister, whose features are similar but have a heaviness to them. It must have been hard for Lucas to be the prettier of the two. Then he turns his face away from me, pointedly. Right, so no help will be forthcoming there then.
With a theatrical sigh that any of my Year Elevens would be proud of, Angel comes over and says, ‘What should I do then?’ in the tone of one who has been horribly inconvenienced.
The baby starts to wail again and a look of pure distaste passes over her face.
‘Wash your hands carefully,’ I mutter. ‘Then take that bottle out of the water and fill it with water from the kettle. Put it on the windowsill to cool off.’
She follows these instructions well enough. I watch her all the time, as I murmur to the baby. He is rooting at my shoulder now, small mouth pursed, trying to find a breast. Water is not going to be enough. I hope to God the Tesco garage has formula milk.
The craziness of this whole scenario hits me again. I shift the position of the baby boy, so he is lying on my forearm, stomach down. I remember an afternoon when Sam wouldn’t stop crying, and the health visitor had arrived to find us both inconsolable. She had shown me this move and it had worked magically when Sam was grumpy with colic.
But it’s not working now. The baby screams on. I hurriedly rearrange him back on my shoulder. He’s becoming surprisingly heavy, the longer I hold him, especially in this heat.
Finally, the water, the bottle and the teat are cool enough. I instruct Angel to put it all together. When I hold the bottle to the baby’s lips, he sucks greedily with noisy slurps. The hydration calms him for a moment, but it doesn’t take long for the realization to come that this isn’t what was wanted.
He starts to cry again, a miserable mewl. I look up, anxiously.
‘Look, he needs milk. I’ll go to the garage and get your money. I won’t tell anyone. But please, please be careful with him. He’s so little.’
Angel looks at Lucas and then back at me.
‘He’ll be fine,’ she says flatly. ‘But that’s entirely in your hands.’
When he has drunk as much of the water as he seems prepared to take, I reluctantly hand the baby over to Angel. Then I go to find outdoor shoes and a light jacket, watched by Angel the whole time. I’m trembling as I pocket my wallet and a small torch. I’ll need it for the darker bits of the road.
‘Right,’ says Angel, when I am ready to go. ‘You had better think very carefully about contacting anyone while you’re out, do you understand me? I mean it. I’ve told you I don’t care about this baby. Do you understand?’
‘Yes!’ I snap, then, ‘Look, you know I can only get a limited amount of money from a cash machine, don’t you?’
‘Three fifty,’ says Angel. ‘That’s the daily limit. That will have to do.’
She pats the baby’s back, her eyes cold. Is she too rough? It’s hard to tell. I feel like a tuning fork, vibrating with every sign of possible aggression around this vulnerable infant.
My instincts scream at me that I can’t, mustn’t, leave. But what choice do I really have?
Angel unlocks the kitchen door and then says my name.
‘It’s three am now,’ she says. ‘I think, what, forty-five minutes is plenty long enough, don’t you?’
‘There might be queues,’ I say, a thread of desperation running through my voice. ‘It’s always busy in there. And it’s a good ten-minute walk too.’
Angel regards me, her eyes cold.
‘Fifty minutes,’ she says. ‘If you’re not back by then, we’re going to have a problem.’ She holds the baby away from her, considers his face and says, ‘Aren’t we?’
Then she pats her pocket and her meaning is clear. I can see the outline of the gun through the fabric.
There is a loaded pause of a few seconds and then she can’t hold it in any longer.
‘What the fuck, Lucas?’ she says and her voice is too loud even to her own ears. ‘Why the shitting hell did you bring that baby here? Are you actually insane?’
He doesn’t reply, merely hangs his head and Angel is suffused with a mix of intense frustration, fear, and love that makes her cross the room and hug him fiercely.
She feels him wince and he doesn’t reciprocate. A bit stung, she drops her arms and turns away.
‘Well, we’ll just have to work something out,’ she says and there is a tremor in her voice now. She wants to cry and she hates crying, so she swallows the feeling down like a bitter drink.
It’s only now that she remembers she hasn’t eaten anything apart from some garlic bread on her shift earlier. Her limbs feel weak and watery, her head filled with cotton-wool.
She goes to the fridge and begins gathering items of food, suddenly ravenous.
Lucas moves to the table and sits down, burying his hands in his curls, and closing his eyes. Angel glances at her brother as she puts houmous and cheese onto the table.
She feels a burst of resentment that he hasn’t answered any of her messages for ages, then presents her with this hot mess. But when she sees the tremor in his hands as he runs them through his hair her heart contracts.
‘You know I love you, whatever, you big drama queen,’ she says.
Lucas looks up and is surprised into a weak smile.
‘I love you too,’ he says and then something about this exchange causes a shift and he suddenly jumps up and begins to pace up and down the length of the kitchen, scratching at his arms. It hurts to watch. It’s like he’s trying to escape from his own skin or something. He
