‘No,’ you say, ‘no, no, my mother’s not here, she’s not my mother, where did she go, did you see her, where did she go?’

The faces, blank.

‘Just over there, I think?’ The direction of the doors.

The mass of people: faces, talking. Dark jackets everywhere, brownish hair. A teenager, spots still on her cheeks, wearing the Frankie’s baseball cap and badge.

‘Excuse me, can I help you?’

‘She’s lost her mother.’

‘She’s not her mother.’

And suddenly you can no longer speak, and suddenly: there she is. Wearing a navy jacket and jeans, tortoiseshell glasses – yes – and a bright silk scarf knotted round her neck (how could you have missed the scarf?). Grey-brown hair in a bob, jiggling the baby in her arms.

Your baby.

‘We woke up,’ she says, ‘didn’t we? We woke up, so we went for a little walk, yes we did.’

‘Is everything ok?’ the Frankie’s girl says, looking between you, as you scoop the baby back into your arms. And oh, the warm heft of her, this is how she feels, this. The soft downy hair on her head, her neck, the milky smell of her, this.

‘Everything’s good?’ the Frankie’s girl says again.

‘She never wakes up,’ you say.

The woman blinks at you.

‘She never wakes up,’ you say, feeling the pitch of your voice rising. ‘Once she’s fed and asleep like that, she never wakes up unless she’s disturbed.’ 9

‘Well, she woke up,’ the woman says, ‘and I didn’t want to leave her crying, so I lifted her.’

Trudging home, drenched, unwieldy buggy-board bumping down and up the slick kerbs, already the thought of anything other than this, implausible. The veil between worlds, the skin closing over. A wanderer who visits another world and spends a lifetime there, only to return to their own and not a minute passed. Just wanting this day to end now, that moment when, the children bathed, tucked into bed or zipped and poppered into duvet bag, flush-cheeked and open-mouthed, asleep and peaceful, you exhale.

It’s only just beginning.

10

Mayday