Crying Out Loud

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There was a baby on my doorstep.

A baby in a stroller.

One of those three-wheelers that can go anywhere.

I looked over to the gateway, waiting for whoever had rung the doorbell to appear; for some responsible adult to come sashaying up the path and make the picture right. Make my heart stop thumping. Why was it thumping? Did I know even then that something was amiss?

I crouched down. The baby was small – an infant, not a toddler. It was sleeping, its arms lying palm up either side of its head. A faint tremor crossed its eyelids; eyelids with a faint blush of blue. It wore a padded, fleecy white all-in-one with the hood up and fold-over gloves. There was a yellow blanket tucked around its legs and peeping out of the top a note, a page of lined paper from a small notebook, the bottom torn unevenly. Block capitals, blue biro: PLEASE LOOK AFTER MY BABY. DON’T TELL ANYONE. I’LL EXPLAIN LATER. ‘Please’ was underlined three times. Then a blurry scrawl – was it a name or just a random scribble? The beginning looked like an ‘h’ but the rest of it dribbled off in a wavy line. The word looked like ‘henna’ or ‘ham’. Was it simply a slip of the pen? A fragment from a shopping list?

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