Morag Joss - Among the Missing aka Across the Bridge

We were in the center of Inverness before half past six. It was a blowy, colorless morning, and the pavement at the bus station where we stepped off was dark and cold in the long, early shadow cast by high buildings; seagulls squabbled over discarded food wrappers blowing along the gutter. The air was brackish with the exhaust fumes of arriving and departing buses, and already the city was noisy with traffic. We hung around until the station coffee stall opened at seven o’clock, and we bought muffins and tea. There wasn’t a proper seat in the place, just a ledge, and the ground was littered with cigarette ends and stained with spilled drink and dropped food and urine. My back ached, and I kept yawning. The tea was both weak and bitter, and I said I felt sick and wished I was still in bed.

Silva told me to shut up. It wasn’t unusual for her to say that kind of thing, but away from the cabin it sounded harsh and different, a way of being spoken to that I should not have had to get used to. Still, I didn’t let it bother me. I remember gazing at her profile as she swallowed her tea and thinking how thin her cheeks were, how much more in need of a doctor she looked than I. I took her hand and whispered my thanks to her for bringing me. And then, although it hadn’t crossed my mind before, I told her that she would be the first to hold the baby. She turned with a gasp. Then she squeezed my hand and smiled, a shining smile full of delight that I had never seen on her face before and that revealed, perhaps, her delight in having me confirm something she had already decided.

We waited until nearly eight o’clock and then caught a bus to the clinic, which opened at half past. Of course, we had had no idea how to find a doctor in Inverness, so Ron had done an Internet search for us and printed out details of the largest clinic in the city. It wasn’t in the center, but it had ten doctors, as well as nurses and midwives and other staff, and I hoped it would be busy and impersonal, too system-bound to probe into my circumstances. I didn’t want to be treated as a person, just as a container that might need technical help to empty it of its load of baby.

I was glad to see that the building was modern and low, an austere, small institution, its doors plastered with notices. Inside, we joined the queue at the receptionist’s window. When my turn came, there were several people behind me and within earshot. Silva kept turning and glaring at them.

“Yes?”

I opened my mouth and stalled. The receptionist had begun writing, and I didn’t like to speak to the top of her head.

“Hello, yes ?” She looked up with a microsmile, no more than a twitch of the mouth.

“Sorry, yes, hello… I’ve just moved here,” I said. “I wonder if I-”

“You want to register,” she said, rolling herself a few feet back on her office chair and reaching into a filing cabinet. “Both of you?”

“No! Not me,” Silva said. “Only her.”

“Do you want the forms in English? We’ve got them in other languages,” she said, rolling back.

“I’m just having a baby,” I blurted. “I don’t need a doctor for anything else. I’m just having a baby.”

The receptionist sat up higher in her chair and looked at my belly, nodded, then swung herself over to another filing cabinet.

“You want Maternity Services. Here’s the antenatal questionnaire as well. We’ll need details of your previous GP. Once you’ve registered, we book you in for an assessment with the community midwife. Antenatal clinic’s Tuesday morning; you need to attend weekly from thirty-five weeks. Postal code?”

“Postal code? Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Sorry.”

“What’s your address? You have to be a resident within the area.”

“Oh, yes. I mean, we’re just moving in. I don’t have it on me.”

I had thought up an address, but suddenly I didn’t dare give it. I felt certain this woman had an encyclopedic memory of Inverness and knew the sound of every doorbell in every street.

Silva pushed forward and pulled at my arm. “Come on, we don’t need this!” she said fiercely. “Let’s go, come on!”

“Silva, wait. Just a minute,” I said. I smiled at the receptionist. “Sorry.”

Silva pushed her face to the window. “She’ll come back another day. She has many weeks still, maybe eight, nine. It’s not urgent.”

The receptionist ignored her and handed me several sheets of paper. “If you want to see a doctor today, you’ll need to go on the end of the list. First you have to fill in the new patient registration form, the patient questionnaire, and also the antenatal questionnaire. We’ll also need your medical card, passport or other photo ID, proof of address, and contact details of your previous medical practitioner.”

She looked past me to the next person in the queue. “Yes?”

Silva steered me out and strode off. She kept walking until we were several streets away and slowed only as we reached a park with paths and litter bins and a tatty children’s playground. She marched through the gates and sat down on a bench, and I followed, exhausted and sweating. She pulled the papers from my hands and sifted through them.

“Questions, so many! For one baby! Why?”

I pulled the papers back and began to read them. I could give a false name and address. I could make up a name for my previous doctor. I could say I had lost my medical card and leave my National Insurance number blank. They might not follow those up straightaway.

But the questions became more nosy, more dangerous. How would I rate my feelings about my pregnancy from one to five, extremely negative to highly positive? Did I live with a partner? How many adults, smokers and nonsmokers, were living at my address, and were any unemployed? Were there domestic pets or other animals at the premises? I could give false answers to all of them, too, but if I turned up every Tuesday at an antenatal clinic, there would be more and more questions. Soon I would make a mistake or give something away. If I registered but didn’t go to the clinic, they would make inquiries and find out I had lied. And once they knew I wasn’t Annabel, what else would they uncover? The newspapers had said nothing about the missing woman tourist being pregnant, but that didn’t mean Col hadn’t told the police that I was.

Col. I had a sudden recollection of him as I had last seen him, his stricken face as he turned away from the wrecked bridge. But I could not undo what I had done.

“They want to know everything,” I said. “If I don’t tell them, they’ll find out anyway.”

Silva’s face was white. “You shouldn’t go back there,” she said. “If you do, when the baby’s born they’ll take it away. It was a stupid idea to come.”

“What am I supposed to do when I go into labor? I can’t have the baby all on my own. What if something goes wrong?”

Silva stood up and started walking. “You just have to go to hospital. Ron will take us. It will be fine.”

I was surprised at how relaxed she was about it.

“You mean just turn up?” I said. “They’ll think that’s very odd, they’ll ask me all sorts of questions. They’ll interfere.”

“So? Have you done a crime, to have a baby? No. They will look after you. Then afterward we’ll leave with the baby, they can’t stop us.”

“And you’ll come with me?”

“Sure, of course! Ron will take us in the boat, then the Land Rover. Then after, he comes again to pick us up in the Land Rover. Four of us!”

She looked almost happy.

“Then everything can get back to normal,” I said. “Then we’ll decide what to do next.”

On the way back she was silent. Just before we got off the bus, she turned to me and said, “I’m going to look after you.”