When she arrived at the hospital to pick Angie up, she found her dressed and ready to leave, although she had brought so little with her that it was hard to tell if she had packed up or not. She was just staring at the sleeping Romany, confounded, as if she couldn’t really believe that she was real, and when she looked up, Maggie could see her eyes glistening.
Maggie lifted the car seat up high, as if it were a flag seized in battle.
‘All set?’ she asked.
‘What’s that?’ asked Angie, looking at the seat in confusion.
‘My new car seat,’ said Maggie, ‘which I am going to use to transport your baby back to your flat. Or were you going to let her roll around on the back seat?’
‘I was just going to hold her,’ said Angie, but the midwife who was stripping the bed shook her head.
‘You can’t do that, Angie. It’s against the law,’ she said. ‘And anyway, we wouldn’t let you leave if you didn’t have a suitable car seat for Baby.’
Angie shook her head as if she was astounded at the bureaucracy of it all, but she smiled gratefully at Maggie.
‘Is there ever anything that you don’t think of?’ she asked her.
‘Nope,’ replied Maggie. ‘Right, do you want to get her in it?’
Angie picked the sleeping Romany up out of the bassinet. The baby flailed her arms about and threw her tiny head from side to side in protest, but she didn’t open her eyes. Angie settled her into the seat and Maggie showed her how the straps fastened, and then the little group of three left the maternity wing.
‘I bet they think you’re my girlfriend,’ said Angie, and Maggie rolled her eyes.
Maggie’s convertible car had almost no boot space and so her purchases were crammed into the back seat, leaving very little room for Angie to sit, but somehow, they managed to squeeze in, Angie lowering herself into the seat gingerly.
‘What is all this crap?’ Angie asked, flapping a hand at the plastic bags and boxes. ‘Your car’s never a mess.’
‘All this crap, as you so delightfully put it,’ replied Maggie in a mock arched tone, ‘is my gift to Romany to celebrate the occasion of her birth.’
Angie looked more carefully then, peering into each bag in turn and then finally looking at the huge cardboard box containing the ‘travel system’。
‘Oh my God, Mags. This lot must have cost a fortune.’
‘Well, Romany must be worth it,’ replied Maggie.
There would be no gushing expressions of gratitude, she knew that, and that wasn’t why she had been so generous. The single, ‘Thanks, Mags,’ that she heard coming from the back of the car was all she needed.
‘You’re welcome,’ was her simple reply.
They arrived back at Angie’s flat, a raggle-taggle bunch with Angie carrying the lighter of the plastic bags of booty and Maggie bearing Romany in the car seat before her like a crown on a velvet cushion. As soon as the key was in the door, Tiger appeared, eager as a puppy to be involved in some as-yet-unknown way.
Maggie chucked him the car keys. ‘Go and bring the rest of the stuff in, would you please?’ she asked him. ‘And don’t forget to lock it afterwards,’ she was compelled to add, but then wished she hadn’t.
He disappeared down the stairs and they went inside. Mercifully, the flat was tidy. Maggie had worried that Tiger might have turned it into even more of a squalid mess than it usually was, but it appeared that he was more domesticated than she had given him credit for. On top of the tidying, he had also made a pink paper banner on which he had written ‘Welcome Home Romany’ in a surprisingly beautiful font. Hidden talents, Maggie thought.
Angie laughed out loud when she saw it.
‘Look at that, Romany,’ she said to the sleeping baby. ‘Uncle Tiger’s been busy.’ She sounded completely delighted by his efforts.
Tiger reappeared carrying bags just in time to catch her appreciation. Maggie saw the expression that passed between the pair of them and felt a twinge of something that might have been jealousy, which she dismissed at once.
‘Cup of tea?’ asked Maggie, resting the car seat containing the sleeping baby gently on the carpet in the centre of the room, where it would be obvious and not get tripped over.
‘I’ll make it,’ said Angie, but Maggie silenced her with a particularly hard stare.
‘There’s a reason it used to be called a confinement, you know,’ she said. ‘You sit down, and I’ll make it.’
Angie looked like she was going to object to being ordered about, but then her shoulders dropped and she sank to the sofa.