Nocturne

Page One.....

It's half past four in the morning, still dark. I've been awake all night, worried sick about Billie. Billie is my baby daughter. She's nearly three months old. This afternoon, in a local park, someone took her away.

I'd been in the cafe for maybe a second or two longer than usual. I was buying myself a sticky bun and a can of Diet Coke. There were lots of people and I had to push my way through to get back outside. The pram was still there, hard up against the window. But Billie had gone.

In the flat upstairs, I can hear Gilbert on patrol, six steps across, nine steps up and down. He's been walking the circuit for hours on end, caged in his own back room, as helpless and desperate as I am. I broke the news this afternoon. It was obvious he didn't believe it and neither can I. I thought that finding Billie gone was the worst moment of my life but every hour that passes makes the feeling worse. What kind of monster takes a baby like that? What kind of mother lets it happen?

I think guilt must wall you off from the world because it takes me longer than usual to pick up the sound of movement outside my bedroom window. I first put the sound of footsteps down to party-goers from the squat across the back. Then, very distinctly, I hear a squeaking hinge. It belongs to the kitchen door that leads to the garden. There's a whispered conversation, two people at least, then silence again. Even Gilbert's footsteps overhead have stopped.

Given what I've been through these past few hours - indeed, these past few months - I suppose I should be hardened to excitements like these but sadly I'm not. I pull the sheet up to my chin. I shut my eyes. I say a prayer. Dear God, please let all this stop.

Seconds later, my bedroom door is opening. I search for the light beside my bed but the torch has already found me. I hear a voice, male, urgent. 

"Miss?" 

I'm shielding my eyes. I expect the worst. It doesn't happen. 

"Get dressed. Quick as you can, love."

At last, I've found the light switch. My visitor is wearing a black jump suit. His hands are gloved. Across the buttoned pocket on his chest, a velcroed strip reads DC Flowers. I should ask him how he forced the door, what right he's got to be here, but this list of sensible questions is the last thing on my mind.

It's about Billie, I say. It's about my baby. Have they found her? Has he come with news? It's obvious he hasn't a clue what I'm talking about. He tells me again to get dressed, to keep calm. The street is being evacuated.

"Evacuated?" 

He nods, backing towards the door. 

"You've got two minutes." He says. "Then you're out of here."

Outside, it's freezing. At the far end of the street, a double-decker bus is filling with other residents. I join them on board. Faces I recognise: families, babies, students, drop-outs, old folk. We're all half-asleep, wall-eyed, bewildered. The place is swarming with police. Everywhere you look there are men and women murmuring into radios. They seem watchful, keyed up. Of Gilbert, I realise there's absolutely no sign.

A couple of minutes later, after a head-count, they drive us away. The local library has obviously been opened specially. There are mattresses on the floor and a pile of neatly-folded blankets. The woman behind the issuing counter is dispensing mugs of cocoa from a big urn.

We whisper to each other, neighbour to neighbour, wondering what possibly might have happened. No one seems to have any information. After a while, curled up beside Fiction G-J, I try to sleep but the memory of Billie won't let me. I want her back. I want her in my arms. Nothing else in the world matters.

Later, I'm not sure when, I feel a hand on my shoulder. It's Gaynor. She squats beside me, as sane and sensible as ever, a radio in her hand. I've never seen her in black before. It suits her.

"You OK?" she says. 

I blink. What a silly question.

"Have they found her?" 

She shakes her head and says there's been no news. I explain about the park, and the cafe, and the way it had happened, so abrupt, so sudden, but I can tell from the look in her eyes that she's got something else on her mind. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asks.

"Tell you what?" 

She stares at me a moment, the kind of look my mother used to give me as a child when I'd done something wicked.

"Gilbert?" Gaynor says softly, "Are you really telling me you didn't know?"