‘Is your husband at home?’
I shake my head. ‘No.’
‘We do have a few resources for at-risk witnesses, a refuge for victims of domestic abuse, but as you can probably imagine, demand far outstrips supply. They’re over capacity already.’
‘So what do you suggest I should do?’ I say. ‘How long are you going to keep me here for?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
He ignores my question. ‘Is there somewhere else local you could potentially stay for a few days? A relative, a friend?’
I think about texting Tara, then immediately remember again that my phone is gone. I don’t know her number off by heart. Come to think of it, I didn’t know any numbers off by heart, apart from my own, Richard’s and my mum’s landline which she’s had since I was a girl.
‘There is somewhere I could probably go, for a few days. My friend Tara, as soon as I can get a new phone sorted.’
‘Good,’ Gilbourne nods. ‘That would probably be wise.’
Holt taps his notepad impatiently with the end of his pen.
‘Let’s get back to the train,’ he says. ‘Kathryn literally handed you her baby and walked away, and you’ve had no further contact with her since?’
‘She asked me to help for a couple of minutes while she dealt with a personal phone call. I was expecting her to come back at any moment – it never occurred to me that she might get off at the next station.’
‘And you had never met her before this, never had a conversation with her, never discussed anything she might or might not be planning to do with this child?’
‘No,’ I say, looking from one detective to the other. ‘Never.’
‘Obviously we can check that against mobile phone records.’
I frown. ‘Right.’
‘To see if you had any contact with Kathryn prior to today’s events.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘I just told you I’d never met her before.’
‘So you’re saying you didn’t plan this with her?’
‘Plan it?’ I stare at the young detective. ‘No, of course not. Wait, so you’re saying that Kathryn planned all of this in advance?’
‘Didn’t she?’ Holt says.
‘I’ve no idea, I’ve already told—’
‘This note you said she left in the baby’s bag,’ Gilbourne says gently. ‘You lost it?’
‘It was in my handbag.’
‘That you left at this place?’
‘Yes.’
‘And just to be clear, everything else that you had – everything related to the baby – you handed over to the desk sergeant on arriving here, correct?’
‘I think so. I mean, Dominic took most of it from me and I left it behind when we ran.’
‘I need you to think hard, now,’ Gilbourne says. ‘Have you surrendered everything? All the baby’s clothes, cloths, feeding paraphernalia, dummies, toys, all that stuff?’
I shift in my seat.
‘I just took Mia and ran for the door,’ I say. ‘There was no time to pick up anything else. What do you need all that for, anyway?’
‘We need to gather all the evidence we can get for potential lab analysis down the line. Depending on how things pan out.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Of course.’
Holt says, ‘What about the guard on the train? Could they corroborate what you’re saying, did you approach the guard at any point?’
I shake my head.
‘There wasn’t one that I could see. Isn’t there CCTV on the train that can confirm what I’ve said?’
‘Not on Chiltern Line trains, unfortunately,’ Holt says. ‘And the cameras at Seer Green have been out of action since last winter. But the cameras at Marylebone picked you up getting off with the baby and heading straight for the exit. Tell us again, why didn’t you alert the station authorities?’
I cast my mind back to those crucial few minutes when I had stepped off the train with Mia in my arms, a little warm bundle of life in the crook of my elbow. Descending onto the platform into noise and chaos, aggression and alcohol, too many people packed in too close to each other.
‘It was chaotic, there were two sets of football fans and it looked as if it was all about to kick off, with us in the middle of it. A lot of hostility. Police with machine guns. And a weird-looking guy who followed me off the train.’
‘And he was different from the one you claim abducted you?’
I suppress a bristle of annoyance at his choice of words.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Two different men.’
‘The first of them, the one on the train, tell me about him.’ Holt has one of those posh accents that he’s trying hard to disguise but that slides out every so often.