Pop Goes the Weasel | страница 137

‘May I help you?’ Her tone was polite but cautious. ‘I’m Wendy Jennings. Have you come to visit someone?’

In response, the woman pulled back her hood and removed her cap. Wendy Jennings gasped.

‘Dear God. Come inside, you poor girl. You need to have that looked at.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Come on now. Don’t be afraid.’

‘I don’t want anything for me.’

‘Then what do you want?’

‘This.’

She unzipped her coat and brought out the soft bundle that had been hidden inside. Wendy looked down at the slumbering baby, swaddled in a warm blanket, and realized what was being offered to her.

‘Take it, for God’s sake,’ the woman hissed.

But now Wendy Jennings was drawing back.

‘Listen, dear, I can see you’re in trouble but we can’t take your baby just like that.’

‘Why not? This is a children’s home, isn’t it?’

‘Yes of course, but -’

‘Please don’t make me beg.’

Wendy Jennings flinched at the tone. There was real distress there but anger too.

‘I can’t care for her any more,’ the woman continued.

‘I see that and I understand, I really do, but there are ways of doing these things. Procedures we have to follow. The first thing we have to do is call the social services.’

‘No social services.’

‘Let me call an ambulance then. Get you seen to and then we can talk about your baby.’

It was a trap. Had to be. She had hoped she would find someone good here, someone she could trust, but there was nothing for her here. She turned on her heel.

‘Where are you going?’ Wendy shouted. ‘Stay, please, and let’s talk about it.’

But she didn’t respond.

‘I mean you no harm.’

‘Like fuck you don’t.’

She hesitated, then turning took a big step forward and spat in Wendy Jennings’s face.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

She marched off down the street without looking back, her baby clutched to her chest. Tears streamed down her face – fat, hopeless tears of impotence and rage.

Her last chance had gone. Her last shot at redemption.

Now there was only death.

It was hopeless. The police had moved the press pack back, reminded them of their responsibilities, but as soon as they departed, it started up again. The hammering on the door, the questions through the letterbox. A few had tried their hand round the back, clambering over the garden fence and rattling the back door. Peering in through the conservatory window like ghouls.

Robert and his parents now lived in perpetual darkness on the first floor. At first they thought they would be out of sight up here, but then they saw a photographer hanging out of a first-floor window across the road and they’d pulled the curtains firmly shut. Now they behaved like creatures of the night, huddling in the dark, eating food from tins and packets – existing rather than living.