Rose stared at him, her face still drained of colour, her eyes wide and bright. In her arms the baby began to stir.
‘Doug,’ I said firmly, ‘sit down,’ and he was so surprised that he did what I asked. I went to Rose and gently lifted the child from her arms. God, she was tiny. She was so, so tiny. I suppose my nurse’s instincts kicked in because I suddenly felt very calm. ‘Do you have formula and nappies for her?’ I asked. When Rose didn’t reply, just gazed at me blankly, I had to go to her and take hold of her shoulder while I said it again, loudly and slowly. I noticed that she was trembling quite violently.
At last she nodded. ‘Yes, yes, I – they’re in the bag beneath Emily’s pushchair. We stopped on the way. There was some milk still left in the bottle that she had with her. I think … I think maybe it’s breast milk.’ She clamped a hand to her mouth then. ‘Oh God,’ she cried. ‘Oh God!’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Good.’ When I’d got the bag I turned to Doug, handing him a bottle and a tin of Cow & Gate. ‘Just follow the instructions on the side.’
It was then that Oliver spoke for the first time. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘I mean, please, if I may?’ He looked so meek and uncertain, so very different from the dashing, charming man I’d met that day in the supermarket. In fact, he looked more like a cowed, frightened … well, wimp is the only word I can think of, to be honest. I felt a sharp cold flash of disdain. I looked away and nodded, and he followed Doug into the kitchen.
Rose began to cry again. ‘That poor woman,’ she said. ‘Oh, Beth, that poor, poor woman.’
And it’s funny, because there I was, a baby in my arms, Rose’s desperate, frightened eyes staring back at me, the knowledge that a woman had died that night, and yet I felt completely calm. Here they were, these big important people, so clever, so successful compared to me, sitting in my living room, miserable and terrified and wanting me to make it all better for them. I held her to me, little Lana as she was called then, and knew what Rose was going to ask me to do.
When Oliver came back in with the bottle of milk, he hesitated, then passed it to me. ‘Would you like to do it?’ I asked him. I raised the baby slightly, offering her to him, and I saw his eyes dart to Rose, saw her briefly shake her head, and, deflated, he dropped his gaze and turned away. I will remember forever the disgust I felt for that man right then. I had thought that he and Rose were so admirable, people to look up to. I realized in that moment how very wrong I’d been.
I turned to Rose. ‘What are you asking us to do?’
To her credit, she didn’t bother beating around the bush. ‘You want a child,’ she said bluntly, ‘you want a baby. I can arrange everything, all the hospital paperwork so you can get a birth certificate saying she is yours.’
Only Doug was surprised. He looked from one to the other of us in confusion before the penny dropped. ‘Are you completely out of your minds?’ he said. ‘This is absolute madness! You need to go to the police and tell them what happened. We want no part of this. We could be arrested. Aiding and abetting it’s called, or … or obstructing the police or something. Absolutely not. This is your mess, not ours.’
‘What if they think I killed her?’ Rose cried. ‘That I pushed her! It will all come out who she is, they’ll say I did it out of revenge. Even if they don’t blame me there will be such a scandal! My career…’ She turned to me, pleading: ‘You are our only hope, Beth. Haven’t you always wanted a child? Now you can be a mother at last. Please, Beth. Please!’
Silently I turned to Doug.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Absolutely not! If you want to adopt a baby then we can do it through the proper channels. We can’t get involved in this. If the police find out we’ve taken a kid that doesn’t belong to us, forged a birth certificate … if they found out we knew what happened to that poor woman and didn’t tell them … What about her relatives? Her family? It’s wrong, Beth, you know it is.’
I looked down at the baby. I knew Doug was right, but God, she was so beautiful. I loved her immediately, I think. She was so defenceless and alone, her mother was dead, her father didn’t want her – what would happen to her now? I lifted her to my face and breathed in the delicious smell of her scalp. I think I already knew by then that I’d never be able to let her go.
Suddenly, Oliver seemed to find his voice. ‘All we ask is that you have her tonight. We can’t be seen with her, people will start asking questions. Please, just have her tonight and think about it.’
Rose caught hold of my hand. ‘I’m begging you, Beth, please help us.’
Doug shook his head and I pulled my hand away from Rose’s. ‘Doug,’ I said, ‘can I talk to you in the kitchen?’
Once we’d shut the door behind us, Doug hissed, ‘There is no way we’re doing this, Beth.’
‘Doug,’ I began, but he cut me off.
‘The very idea is insane. We can’t take in someone else’s child! A woman died tonight, we should tell the police!’
We must have been in there for half an hour, arguing back and forth. I think I wore him down in the end. ‘It’s one night,’ I promised him. ‘Just one night. Let the baby have a good night’s sleep in peace and we’ll decide what to do in the morning. Please, Doug,’ I said. ‘Please.’ I think he knew that there would be no talking me out of it and eventually, reluctantly, he agreed. ‘One night,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
We went back to the living room. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll look after her tonight.’ I could hardly look at Oliver as he thanked us, his eyes full of shame and gratitude.
After they had left, Doug and I took care of Lana. We fed her, changed her, and made her a makeshift bed next to ours. She was such a good little soul; so peaceful and quiet. I did with her what I’d never allowed myself to do with any of the babies I’d looked after in the hospital: I closed my eyes and held her to me and let myself pretend she was mine. She seemed to fit in the crook of my neck so perfectly, it felt so right to have her snuggled against me.
When she was sleeping peacefully, I took a deep breath and steeled myself to talk to Doug. ‘I know the circumstances are awful,’ I began cautiously, whispering in the darkness, ‘but this, surely, is the answer to our prayers. You heard Rose, she’ll get us the necessary paperwork so we can get a birth certificate saying she’s ours. They’ll think Lana died with her mother, that her body was lost at sea. No one need ever know.’
He kept repeating the same thing, saying it was morally wrong, that we could get into terrible trouble. I thought I’d never change his mind. But when Lana woke a few hours later in the middle of the night, I passed her to him while I went to make up her milk. When I came back, he was sitting on the end of the bed holding her, an expression on his face as he gazed down at her that I’d never seen before. It was a scene I’d imagined so many times throughout those endless years and years of hope and disappointment, and I felt a lump lodge itself in my throat. I sat down next to him and silently passed him the bottle.
‘I was thinking,’ he murmured as we watched her drink. ‘What if you’re right? What if this is our only chance? If we never did manage to have our own, or for some reason couldn’t adopt. What then?’ He looked at me. ‘You’d never forgive me, would you?’ He sighed and added, ‘I don’t think I’d ever forgive myself.’