Priscilla Masters: Frozen Charlotte

She held out her hands towards the woman and child. ‘Can I take a look at her, please?’

Alice peered down at the bundle. ‘She’s asleep now,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t try and wake her when she’s so nicely settled.’ She looked up. ‘Babies need such a lot of sleep, don’t they? You must know that – as a nurse.’

‘I won’t wake her,’ Lucy promised.

Alice scrutinized her as though wondering whether she could trust this nurse with her precious child.

‘I’m due to go off duty now,’ Lucy said. ‘But it would be nice if I could see to Poppy before I go.’

Alice nodded. ‘All right.’ She loosened her grip on the bundle but did not hand her over.

It was going to take more coaxing. ‘Why did you bring her to the hospital tonight, Mrs Sedgewick? Is she ill?’

The woman’s eyes dropped. She swallowed and her eyes moistened. ‘Don’t take her away from me,’ she whispered. ‘Not again. I couldn’t bear it this time. She is mine. Don’t take her. Please.’

‘Alice,’ Lucy said, ‘you need to give Poppy to me so I can help her. Make her better.’

The expression in Alice’s eyes changed now ever so slightly. They still looked frightened and guilty but there was a flickering light. Something was humouring her. ‘I don’t think so,’ Alice said, smiling now. ‘I don’t think you’ll be able to make her better. It’s a little late for that.’

Lucy’s hands reached out. ‘She’ll be safe with me,’ she promised and at last, at long last, Alice Sedgewick handed the bundle over.

It was very light, was Lucy’s first thought, as she grasped it. She drew back the blanket, peered inside and almost dropped the thing , making a sound of utter revulsion, as though she was retching. Members of staff came running then from all directions as Lucy Ramshaw held the bundle as far away from her as she could, her face shocked and revolted.

The hospital slipped straight into Correct Protocol, there being one for every single situation. Almost.

The priority is to isolate, to keep dramas away from the public gaze and minimize disruption and upset. Dr Jane Miles and a couple of porters ushered Alice Sedgewick into the nearest available private area, Sister’s Office. Lucy Ramshaw took the bundle and placed it in an empty cubicle with hospital security keeping guard. They had expected Alice to make a fuss when she was separated from the baby but she was surprisingly quiet.

Sarinda rang the police.

A squad car was usually marauding somewhere in the vicinity of the hospital A &E department. If it was a quiet night outside the police could, if they wished, find customers in here. Drunks, druggies, people who’d been in fights. Then there was the other side of the coin, the victims, the rape-or-not cases, the prey of minor thieves who’d got a black eye for trying to defend their possessions and tonight there were plenty of people who’d been in slips and slides or prangs and bangs in their cars, slithering around on the icy roads. All in a night’s work on a Saturday evening for an average Shropshire copper like Police Constable Gethin Roberts. So after cruising round the town, picking up waifs and strays, he’d stuck round the hospital casualty department and was waiting for customers to roll in. If they didn’t, there were consolations; the nurses were generally friendly and generous with cups of coffee and chit-chat. A &E departments had been the birthplace of many a romance between copper and nurse or copper and doctor. Police Constable Gethin Roberts had been sitting outside, watching the sliding doors open and close and wondered which nurses were on duty tonight. So within minutes of Lucy Ramshaw uncovering the child’s face and Sarinda’s desperate call, his size elevens were striding towards Sister’s Office. Tall and thin with a large Adam’s apple that was bobbing up and down his nervous neck, he hardly knew what to do. This was not in the police manual. He had a quick word with Dr Miles who filled him in with the bare details. He followed her into the cubicle, peeked at the contents, wished he hadn’t and spoke quickly and nervously into his phone.

‘Roberts here. Yes. I’m at the A &E now. I’ve got a woman here who…’ He ran out of words. ‘She turned up with a bundle wrapped up in a blanket. She’d been here a while, I think.’

He paused, listening.

‘Staff don’t know how long exactly…’

There was more talk on the other end.

‘It’s a baby – or it was a baby.’

Dr Jane Miles could well imagine the next question.

What do you mean it was a baby?

‘It’s in a state of decay.’

How long’s it been dead for?

‘I don’t know.’ Roberts’s response this time was truculent. ‘I’m not a pathologist, am I?’

Have a guess when it died .

‘A long time ago, I think. Anyway. It’s definitely dead now and I could do with some backup.’

He listened for a while to the invisible voice before adding, ‘Well – I’m going to need a police surgeon because I’m going to have to bring her into custody.’

He folded his phone back into his pocket and spoke to Dr Miles. ‘OK then,’ he said, with a cheerfulness and confidence he definitely did not feel. ‘Let’s take a look at her.’

As he approached the door he glanced through the glass at the woman who was sitting bolt upright, staring into space in front of her. ‘A psychiatrist wouldn’t be a bad idea, surely, doctor?’ he commented.

‘Possibly,’ Jane Miles said briskly. ‘It’s hard to say how disturbed or psychotic she is. And until you or we do a bit of delving we won’t know her psychiatric history. At times she appears composed and lucid and at others…’ She gave the bony police constable a friendly grin, ‘Well, to use a well known medical phrase, “barking”.’

PC Roberts pushed the door open. His instinct had been to interview the woman somewhere that seemed less like a fishbowl. Sister’s Office was a little too public with a glass window which overlooked the entire cubicled area. He’d thought there were rooms set aside for grieving relatives but Jane Miles explained that it was already taken by the girlfriend and parents of the road traffic victim who were trying to come to terms with the idea that their loved one wasn’t coming home tonight. Not only that but he had suddenly become a valuable collection of spare parts. So PC Roberts had to make do with the distraction of a ringside seat which overlooked all the dramas being enacted in the department. It was hardly private. Not only could he look out but others could look in. And they did. Peering in like the people who suddenly find themselves on the television when an interviewer walks the streets. He would have had curtains drawn or screens put around, but curtains and screens had been banned from the hospital a few years ago by the Infection Control Team. As he entered the room the first person he noticed was Lucy Ramshaw who was sitting, white-faced, her chin in her hands, staring ahead of her with a shocked expression on an already tired and pale face. Perhaps they both needed a psychiatrist, was Roberts’s next thought. A doctor too. And a nurse. Staff Nurse Lucy Ramshaw looked as though she was about to be sick.

He was glad when one of the night nurses came to sit with her, filching a cardboard vomit bowl underneath her chair. He had sympathy with Staff Nurse Ramshaw. He knew exactly how she felt. He too had been horrified at the sight of that tiny, wizened face with its parchment, blackened skin and hollowed eyes.

Alice Sedgewick was sitting in the corner, looking at the floor. Gethin Roberts sat down next to her and introduced himself, flicking his ID card in front of eyes that were completely uninterested in her surroundings. He drew out his notebook