murmur was probably intended to be a personal observation but the silence surrounding him was so profound the words might as well have been shouted.
‘Go to the top of the class, Stick.’ Bruce grinned.
‘Is it a girl or a boy?’ Tim queried.
‘It’s not colour-coded,’ Jason complained. ‘How are we supposed to know?’
‘Change its nappy,’ Cliff advised knowledgeably.
‘Not on your life!’ Jason held both hands up, palms outwards, and leaned back to emphasise the invisible barrier. ‘I don’t do babies.’
‘Someone did,’ Mrs McKendry snapped. Her arms were still folded and she was tapping one foot impatiently. ‘And I’d like to know who.’
‘Wasn’t me,’ Jason declared firmly.
‘Or me,’ Stick and Cliff said simultaneously.
‘Definitely wasn’t me.’ Tim raised an eyebrow at Laura and she smiled. Having a baby dumped on your doorstep certainly wasn’t a boring thing to happen.
‘I should be so lucky,’ Bruce sighed.
They all stared at the infant. Fluffy, dark blue polar fleece fabric with cute yellow ducks on it had been folded to form a mattress in the box. The baby had been wrapped in a blanket of the same fleece but tiny limbs had been active enough to loosen the covering and miniature hands could be seen poking from the armholes of a white stretch suit. A tiny fist threatened to clout its owner’s cheek but somehow it escaped causing pain and settled against a questing mouth instead. Surprisingly loud sucking noises filled the new silence and large dark blue eyes stared up fearlessly at the crowd of faces leaning over the box.
‘It’s hungry.’ As a father of three, Cliff was entitled to take the lead as far as experience in such matters went.
‘Could be hereditary.’ Stick gave one of his usual cheerful grins. ‘Who’s always hungry around here?’
‘Don’t look at me!’ Jason’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘I told you, I don’t do babies. I’m careful, man. Always have been.’
‘There’s always one that slips through the net.’
There was a ripple of laughter. ‘Especially when the catch is that big!’
‘It has got blond hair,’ Bruce observed. ‘Except I don’t suppose it means that much at this age.’
‘How old do you reckon it is?’
For some reason everyone looked at Laura. Was she supposed to know the answer due to some feminine intuition? Had she always been lumped in the ‘motherly type’ basket? Or had everybody simply noticed how quiet she’d been so far? Cliff wasn’t about to be outdone in the knowledge stakes, however.
‘It’s pretty newly hatched, I’d say. Two or three weeks?’
Laura caught her breath but her reaction had nothing to do with the thought of such a young baby being abandoned. She had just realised why the baby’s face was so fascinating.
The eyes weren’t really that dark. They were blue, certainly. A lovely sort of cornflower blue. They gave the initial appearance of darkness because of the edging to the iris, which was a shade deep enough to compete with the pupil. Why had nobody else noticed such an obvious genetic link to a potential parent in this group of men? There was only one person who had eyes like that.
And they were exactly like that.
Another frisson of an unidentifiable emotion caught Laura unexpectedly. Jealousy, perhaps? No. It was more like a feeling of connection to that baby. A longing to touch it. To pick it up. When the little fist was suddenly flung free of the sucking mouth and a tiny face crumpled and reddened she had no hesitation in reaching into the box.
Nobody else was going to do it, she told herself. The men were backing off in alarm at the deterioration in the baby’s mood. At her touch, the screwed-up face relaxed and the tiny fist unfurled to encompass her finger. Laura smiled into a carbon copy of Jason Halliday’s eyes.
‘Hello, there,’ she whispered.
Only a few short minutes had passed since Mrs McKendry had dropped this bombshell in their midst but it was very unusual that the older woman had not yet said more than she had. Nobody was surprised to hear her begin to issue some firm instructions.
‘Sit down at this table—every last one of you. I don’t care if half of Wellington burns to the ground. You’re no’ going anywhere till we get to the bottom of this.’
Amazingly, the whole group of burly, dedicated firefighters complied. They were all out of their depth right now and it clearly came as a relief for their self-appointed surrogate mother to take charge.
‘We should call the police,’ Bruce suggested mildly. ‘It’s a criminal offence to leave a baby unattended.’
The look he received questioned his level of intelligence rather eloquently. ‘Whoever left this bairn had reason to think it would be attended to.’
A dainty foot tapped on linoleum in the silence that followed.
‘And there can be only one explanation for that. One of you is this baby’s father.’
‘You’re lucky.’ Jason’s comment was directed at Laura, who, along with Mrs McKendry, was the only person now standing. ‘It can’t be yours. I think we would have noticed.’
The chuckle of appreciation at the attempt to lift the atmosphere was short-lived and it hadn’t even raised a smile as far as Laura was concerned. Carrying a full-term baby may well have made her large enough for Jason to notice. In fact, it was probably the only way he’d really notice her as a woman.
As though her resentment was contagious, the baby emitted a fractious cry and Laura did what she’d been wanting to do ever since she’d first seen what was in the box. She scooped the baby up and cradled it in her arms.
It was crying in earnest now and there was no doubt it was well overdue for a nappy change but Laura didn’t mind. The slight weight of the infant in her arms triggered an instinctive and remarkably fierce desire to protect and comfort it. She rocked her noisy, smelly bundle and directed soothing words towards its ear. The words she spoke were unimportant. So was what was being said around her for the next few moments.
The first Red Watch arrivals to take over the day shift started to form a secondary tier of astonished spectators. As far as these men were concerned they were not involved. The baby had been left during the night, therefore it had to be someone on Green Watch who was implicated as the father. Some even found the situation highly amusing.
‘No wonder someone left it on the doorstep. Noisy little bugger, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t get too close. It doesn’t smell great either.’
‘Let’s put it back where Mrs Mack found it.’ The speaker suddenly thought of an urgent job that needed attending to as he felt the heat of Jean McKendry’s glare.
‘I still think
