The clock read 4.17. The windows, black mirrors.

She took a penknife long and sharp aye-o

She took a penknife long and sharp,

And pierced the two pretty babes to the heart

Lay me down me dilly dilly downwards

Down by the greenwood side-o

Maybe Lauren would ask her to stop. The singing might wake Mrs Gooch. Plus, it was a horrible song, the words were creepy and the tune was weird, sort of sad and angry. She’d been pleased, initially, when she’d realised there was another woman on the ward with twins but she wasn’t sure she could be friends with someone who had no consideration for others.

The curtain had been pulled all the way around the cubicle, boxing it in. There was a gap of a few centimetres at one corner and Lauren widened it, peering through. The lamp was angled at her face, she was caught in the glare. She held a hand up to shield her eyes.

“Excuse me,” she said. The woman did not respond, kept humming the strange old tune. She tried again, a bit louder. “Excuse me?”

There was no hospital bed. The woman was sitting in the chair, the same as the one of pale green vinyl next to her own bed, next to all the beds on the ward. The scene was too small for the cubicle—without the bed there seemed too much floor space. The distance between Lauren and the woman was wide as a river. The woman was leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and a large basket between her bare feet, feet dirty enough to stand out black against the floor. Rags from the woman’s dress were long fingers trailing against those feet, against the floor, forming a fringe over the basket. The glare from the angled lamp meant that Lauren couldn’t see the babies in the basket but she could hear them, ragged phlegmy breaths and two—definitely two—high-pitched voices murmuring. She took a step inside the cubicle, moving to get a better look, more from curiosity than anything else because she could see at once that this woman shouldn’t be there. She must be homeless. She wore several layers of clothing, as if she were cold even though it was oven-hot in the hospital. But when Lauren stepped closer she began to shiver. She was at once aware of the thinness of her hospital gown, cold air surrounding her, whispering around her exposed legs and entering the gown from below so that she wrapped her arms across herself to stop it. There must have been an air-conditioning outlet right there above them. It was a damp cold and there was a muddy, fishy smell which must have been coming from the homeless woman. Lauren sensed that she had been noticed, she knew it, but the woman hadn’t moved at all, not a millimetre. She was singing again.

She throwed the babes a long ways off aye-o

She throwed the babes a long ways off