There was a feeling of release and then a blood-soaked thing spiralled out from between her legs. It started crying immediately, and Gina scooped it up, wrapped it in a blanket.

‘It’s a girl,’ she said, beaming from ear to ear. She placed the blanketed infant on Claire’s stomach. ‘Look, babe, isn’t this wonderful? You got a little girl.’

Claire looked. The thing didn’t have the dark hair and glaring eyes she had expected. Instead there was just light blonde fluff above a red, puckered face. But even so, she recoiled.

‘Get it away from me,’ she said at once. ‘I don’t want it.’

‘Oh come on . . .’ Gina looked startled.

‘I said get it away from me!’ yelled Claire.

40

40

‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Gina to Sylvester as they sat in his office days later. ‘I know some women go through a hard time and they find it hard to tolerate the child. But this . . .’

Sylvester looked glumly over at the baby, which was for now slumbering peacefully in the cot they’d made for her out of the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. She was a pretty little thing, and snug in there, and safe. Gina had nipped out and got the kid some formula, because Claire refused to feed the baby herself. She wouldn’t even look at the poor little thing.

‘Well, I don’t know much about babies,’ he said. Or women, come to that. He was useless with women, didn’t really know how to approach them or speak to them. But he liked sweet-natured Claire more than any woman he’d ever met, and it pained him to see her suffering like this.

‘I’ve tried to take the baby up there, time and again, but she won’t have it. She gets hysterical. In fact . . .’ Gina chewed her lip, her expression troubled.

‘What?’ prompted Sylvester.

‘I think I’d be scared to leave the kid with her. I don’t know.’ Gina wiped her hand tiredly across her face and fastened her eyes on the baby. ‘I think . . . she might try to harm it. Or herself.’

‘Who, Claire?’ Sylvester was shaking his head. Claire was the gentlest woman he knew. The nicest. Everyone loved her. She would never harm a child.

Gina looked bleakly at Sylvester. ‘We have to do something. And . . . Christ, I don’t want to, but I think it’ll be best for the poor kid.’

‘You’ve thought of something?’

‘I have,’ said Gina sadly.

Gina gave it one last try with Claire, but Claire just cried and turned her face to the wall. It was no good. So when Cyrus collected Gina from work a few days later, she took the baby with her. He drove over to Clinton Hill and parked up outside the place.

‘She sure about this? The mother?’ Cyrus asked his wife.