‘That’s not the point. I see I shall have to spell it out to you. You never married and so forfeited the right to compassion. We just can’t have that sort of behaviour in our midst, shoved in our faces. It’s no example to the children of this parish, is it? Bairns out of wedlock! I think you’re still in a fragile state of mind, easily upset, volatile, and I should check your sedation. We don’t want to have to readmit you, do we?’

Netta’s mind was racing. She could hear the veiled threat in his patrician pan-loaf accent. Shut up, let him think you’re being obedient, be a good little girl, she told herself. The warning had been given. Nothing must make her return to Park Royal. She must take no chances. Dr Begg was wrong, all her instincts were screaming, he’s wrong! Her baby should be at her side now, not at Peg’s… But Netta bowed her head in submission, swallowing her thoughts. It was time to stay silent.

A Secret Outing

Netta wrapped the baby tightly against the chill wind, packed the base of the bucket pram with his best outfit and a bottle of juice to pacify him and told Peg that they were going for a walk. ‘Don’t go far,’ she yelled as usual. ‘No, not far,’ Netta replied, racing down the track for the coast road, hoping for a lift. She had telephoned ahead for an appointment and waited by the bus halt for the morning coach, leaving the pram at the bottom of the ditch, hood up and canopy hidden from view.

In the bus she sat with Ray on her lap looking outwards, pointing to the rugged cattle in the fields, jiggling him until Kirkcudbright harbour came into view with its castle ruins and fishing fleet. They alighted near the square and made for the photographer’s studio off the High Street. He was set up and ready for they were late.

Ushered into the back, she changed Ray into his smocked romper and put on the jacket of her two-piece wedding suit in lavender crepe with its embossed lapels and collar. It had been waiting in the wardrobe all those months she’d been away, perfumed with mothballs but almost as new as the day it was first put on. It hung on her shrunken frame and when she fixed her hair into a smart Victory roll Netta felt suddenly older and greyer, drained of colour. Once dressed she placed over Ray’s neck Mother’s rainbow necklace which she had found at the back of Peg’s knicker drawer, still in its battered blue cardboard box from Laing’s of Glasgow.