Alice wanted to scream his name as loud as she could to make the policeman listen, but she had no idea what it was.

“His name, Mrs. Cotton?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, lips quivering.

“So, let me get this right. You don’t know the name of the doctor who delivered your baby, you don’t know where your mother is, you don’t know where your baby is, and you haven’t got a husband. Are you really a new mother?” He gave her a slow once-over, and she saw herself through his eyes; she looked and felt every bit as powerless as the homeless man she’d passed on the street.

She could barely speak, the tears were falling so fast, but she finally managed to say, “My aunt, she can tell you what happened—”

“Look, luv, my advice to you is to go home and stop wasting police time. I told you, we’ve more than enough to deal with without loonies.”

He lifted the wooden hatch and came around to her side of the counter, standing too close with his arms folded across his chest.

“Off you go, then,” he said sharply.

Alice backed away, silenced by her disbelief, and stumbled through the doors and out into the bitter morning air.

Ruth’s wet umbrella stood in the corner of the porch, raindrops spilling down the dark fabric, water pooling at its base. Alice’s breath rasped as she closed her eyes and turned the key, pushing the front door wide open while she listened for the cry of a newborn.

She’d left the police station and hurried west past the incongruous turrets and domes of the Royal Pavilion, barely silhouettes in the burgeoning daylight. Alice’s legs had been weak and trembling, her mind still reeling from her ordeal at the police station, so she’d hailed a passing taxi to take her to Brighton station where she’d stopped to look back down over the rooftops at the skyline she was leaving behind. From this station, there were trains bound for London, as well as other destinations to which her mother could easily have traveled—north to the Midlands or even Scotland, or the West Country. So many infants and children had been evacuated, no one would notice one more baby without its mother. Where are you, and why have you taken Eadie? Why did you come up with our plan, go along with it for months, and then take her now? It doesn’t make sense.

It had taken all her strength to force herself through the station entrance. Platforms and trains had been visible through the large archways, the immense glass-and-iron roof cantilevered overhead. Vehicles had been making deliveries and collections from the forecourt, milk pails rolled down the concourse onto a waiting train, and her eyes had darted everywhere, searching for her mother and her newborn.