“She asked whether he’d be all right.

Once.

At about four.

And then she asked me not to tell anybody she’d asked.”

I signed the temporary release on a metal tray table with a blue biro.

She gave me a cardboard box with three bottles of ready-made formula in it and a printed booklet about infant care, and she told me he needed to see somebody in town by Tuesday, and I carried him out through the double doors at twenty past eight in the morning on the eleventh of June.

Part Seven: The Basket