I look down at the baby in my arms, Mia blinking against the bright light, and begin walking towards the main concourse. At the barrier I reach into my handbag for my ticket, searching awkwardly with my right hand while my left supports Mia. I try to reach into my jacket pocket, just about managing to push down into it with my right hand. Not in there either. Someone tuts loudly in the queue behind me, moving away to another of the ticket barriers. Was it in my trouser pocket? I pat the pockets of my jeans but can’t feel its outline. The guard, a smiling fiftyish woman with short dark hair, comes over and gives Mia a little wave.
Should I tell the guard what’s happened? Or would she just direct me to the nearest police officer? I’m trying to think of the right words to use but the guard isn’t looking at me, she’s grinning at Mia.
‘Aren’t you a little cutie?’ the woman says, as the baby regards her with slow-blinking blue eyes. ‘Let’s give your mummy a hand, shall we?’
She taps her own pass on the sensor and the grey plastic barrier swings open.
‘Thank you,’ I say, a small bloom of relief in my chest. ‘You’re very kind.’
The guard gives Mia another one-finger wave.
‘Have a lovely day, you two.’
I walk into the main concourse and look for signs to an information point, a ticket office or wherever the station manager might be. Do the British Transport Police have offices in the big stations? I’ve never seen one in Marylebone, but then I’ve never really looked either. In central London it feels like anything that isn’t a stabbing or a terror alert is a long way down the police pecking order. Is this the sort of thing they would deal with on the spot, like an imminent threat to life? Not really.
Reaching the station concourse proper, I catch sight of my reflection in the window of a shop and I’m momentarily disorientated by the shadowy image of myself with a baby tucked into my arm. It’s almost like I’m looking into a parallel life, a parallel universe, where the last round of IVF has worked and I’ve had Richard’s baby. And here I am bringing our daughter home, the wonderful warm little heft of a baby in my arms.
I know that parallel life isn’t real. And yet, here I am, with Mia.
With a jolt, I catch another reflection in the glass. Just behind me, keeping pace with steady strides, black beanie hat on his head. The thin man from the carriage is following me.
4
He’s walking slowly with a strange, spidery gait alongside a handful of other passengers. Pretending to be looking at his phone while he walks. I think of the bruises on Kathryn’s arm. The fear in her eyes. Perhaps this was the boyfriend? Not the broken-nose guy on the phone, but this man? Seeing him among regular passengers just adds to his sense of otherness, a sense of not belonging that seems to radiate from him. I quicken my pace.
Further behind me there are shouts, loud and angry, male voices full of protest. Some kind of row breaking out back on the platform. I glance over my shoulder to see the red-and-white shirted football fans held up at the barrier, arguing with the guards – something about tickets – their faces contorted with anger, swigging from cans of lager. The fans shouting, swearing to let them through, their mates joining in the protest, yellow-jacketed platform staff gravitating towards the commotion to calm it by sheer force of numbers.
‘Stand back!’
‘Open the bastard gate then!’
I walk faster, the shouts from the ticket barrier cutting through the air behind me. Another group of young men approach in a loose group from the opposite direction, a dozen of them in their twenties, jeans and tattoos, blue football shirts. Fists aloft as they shout their songs, belligerent voices echoing off the roof of the station. A shouted challenge as they see the opposition fans held up at the ticket barrier, other passengers skittering to the side, backing off to clear a path between the two sets of fans. Gestures and taunts and more swearing, a hurled can arcing through the air, landing with a flat smack and a spray of lager on the platform.
Mia whimpers at the sudden noise. I obey my instincts. I quicken my pace away from the confrontation, avoiding eye contact and shifting my path away from the men, my whole body tensing against the noise and aggression. With a ferocity I haven’t felt in years, I feel my right hand curling into a fist in the certainty that I will flatten the first one who dares to lay a finger on Mia.
The football fans pass by, a fug of beer breath and sweat and pungent aftershave in their wake.
I check my reflection in another shop window. The thin guy is still following me.
At the far end of the concourse is the sign for the exit: the remainder of the journey that awaits me. A five-minute walk down to Edgware Road tube, Circle line to Notting Hill, change to the Central line then eight stops to South Greenford and the walk up the main road, through the park to my cold, empty house. I’ve done the return trip to the specialist so many times these past five years, I can do it in my sleep now. And until half an hour ago, I thought of little beyond taking that last leg of my journey back from the clinic, sitting on the Tube on autopilot, knowing my own stop without even having to look up. It would be easy to let my feet take me there now, following that familiar route.
Easy, but wrong.
Finally, I spot a pair of police uniforms. A couple of armed policemen stand guard, their backs to a tall column in the centre of the concourse. They wear body armour and are bulky with equipment, black straps and pouches and radios, pistols on their thighs and rifles across their chests, index fingers resting against trigger guards. Instead of feeling relief, though, I find myself repulsed by them, by the closeness of these weapons to the tiny life in my arms. I’m no stranger to guns, but this is different.
Still, I’m going to have to talk to them, tell them what’s happened. We’ll all go to a back office, and I’ll give a statement and fill in some forms, and they’ll take the baby away from me. I’ll hand Mia over and that will be that. Hand her over to these men with their guns, these men equipped for war on the streets.
The thought gives me a cold, empty sensation, a pinch of unease in my stomach.
Today, here, now, I see threats everywhere. I have a powerful urge to take Mia as far away from these guns as possible. And I can’t stop thinking about the note in the baby’s bag. Don’t trust the police. But what option do I have? I think we could have been followed off the train, and it seems clear that Kathryn, wherever she is, is in some kind of trouble. I head for the two armed officers, preparing what I will say. This baby? She’s not mine. She was given to me . . . But as I approach, one of them touches his earpiece, speaks briefly into his radio, and then both hurry off towards the platforms without giving me a second glance.
I turn and watch them go, their equipment jingling as they jog towards the confrontation between the two sets of football fans, which is getting louder all the time. I can’t see any other police on the concourse. Maybe the ticket office? But this station isn’t a safe place. Guns, shouting, drunks, noise, crowds. Anger. Hooligans. Police on the lookout for knife-wielding terrorists and suicide bombers. I glance over my shoulder: the weirdo from the train is still following me. But it’s not just him, this whole place makes me uneasy. There’s danger everywhere and I feel exposed – it isn’t a safe environment for Mia. Thousands of people coming and going, packed together but oblivious to each other amid the hurry and the rush and the noise. There is a reason why train stations are a favourite target for terrorists.