But he didn’t manage to get much from the box, either. ‘There’s a couple of long blonde hairs, but they don’t necessarily belong to the mother. Though I found an envelope under the newspaper at the bottom of the box.’
‘Newspaper?’ Josh asked.
‘For insulation against the cold, maybe,’ PC Walters said. ‘There’s a gold chain in there and a note—though there aren’t any prints. There are a couple of fibres, so she was probably wearing gloves.’
Amy read the note and then passed it to Josh.
Please look after Hope. I’m sorry.
‘So the baby’s name is Hope?’ Josh asked.
‘Seems so.’
Amy shared a glance with Josh. Hope. How terribly sad, because hope was clearly the last thing the baby’s mother felt right now.
‘Do you recognise the handwriting at all?’ PC Graham asked.
‘No,’ Amy said.
‘Me neither,’ Josh agreed.
‘We can take the box back with us—and the blanket—but I don’t think it’s going to help much,’ PC Walters said, accepting a mug of tea.
They went through the whole lot again when Jane Richards, the social worker, arrived ten minutes later.
‘So what’s going to happen to the baby?’ Amy asked.
Jane grimaced. ‘At this time of year, everyone’s on leave. You’re lucky if you can get anyone even to answer a phone. And with Christmas falling partly on a weekend, the chances of getting hold of someone who can offer a foster care placement are practically zero. So I guess the baby’s going to have to stay in hospital for a while.’
‘The local hospital’s on black alert,’ Josh said. ‘Apart from the fact that beds are in really short supply right now, there’s bronchiolitis on the children’s ward, and there’s flu and the winter vomiting virus in the rest of the hospital. The chances are that Hope would go down with something nasty, so they’ll refuse to take her.’
Jane looked at Amy. ‘As you’re the one who found her, and Christmas is meant to be the season of goodwill... Would you be able to look after her for a few days?’
‘Me?’ Amy looked at her in shock. ‘But don’t you have to do all kinds of background checks on me, first?’
‘You’re a teacher,’ Jane said, ‘so you’ll already have gone through most of the checks. The rest of it is just formalities and, as I’m the senior social worker on duty in this area today, I can use my discretion.’
‘I’m more used to dealing with teenagers,’ Amy said. ‘I’ve not really had much to do with babies.’ Much less the baby she’d so desperately wanted to have with Michael. Something that could never, ever happen for her. ‘I’m not sure...’ And yet Jane was right. Christmas was the season of goodwill. How could Amy possibly turn away a helpless, defenceless newborn baby?
‘I could help out,’ Josh said. ‘I’m working today and tomorrow, but I could help out between my shifts.’
So she’d have someone to talk things over with, if she was concerned. Someone who had experience of babies—and, better still, was a doctor.
But there was one possible sticking point. Even though she knew it was intrusive, she still had to ask. ‘Will your partner mind?’ she asked.
‘I don’t have a partner,’ Josh said, and for a moment she saw a flash of pain in his expression.
Did he, too, have an ex who’d let him down badly? Amy wondered. She was pretty sure that, like her, he lived alone.
‘I can make decisions without having to check with anyone first,’ he said. ‘How about yours?’
‘Same as you,’ she said.
‘Which makes it easy.’ He turned to Jane. ‘OK. We’ll look after Hope between us. How long do you need us to look after her?’
She winced. ‘Until New Year’s Eve, maybe?’
A whole week? ‘Just as well it’s the school holidays,’ Amy said wryly.
‘I’m off for a couple of days between Christmas and New Year,’ Josh said. ‘I’ll do as much as I can. But the baby has nothing, Jane. I just went out to get emergency milk, nappies and enough clothes to keep her going until you got here. Her mother left her wrapped in a blanket in the box, and there wasn’t anything with her. Well, the police found a note and a gold chain that the mum obviously wanted the baby to have,’ he amended, ‘but the baby doesn’t have any clothes.’
‘We don’t have anywhere for her to sleep—and, apart from the fact that the police have taken the box, a cardboard box really isn’t a suitable bed for a baby,’ Amy added.