Being in one position for any length of time was becoming a bit of a challenge. I was immensely grateful that work, to keep the health & safety gods happy, had splashed out and we all had adjustable-height desks now, so sometimes I stood, sometimes I sat, depending on how the mood, the aches and the kid took me. Over the course of a day the aches did a random shuffle through my playlist of sore feet, sore back, and that disconcerting feeling like someone was trying to prise your pelvis apart from the inside by ramming a large object through the middle. At this stage my sit bones were complaining louder than my back, so it was time to go up in the world. The sooner this poppet was out the better. I fiddled with the control and listened to the gentle whirr as the desk level rose to standing height. It was always slightly disappointing that the mechanism was so smooth and slow, as a part of me would have loved to see it go rogue, jerk and take off skyward, sending pot plants and computer screens flying everywhere.
‘That’s right, stand up, Shep,’ a voice piped up from across the room. ‘Oh, you are standing.’
Unfortunately, some in the office enjoyed giving me grief about the fact that the sum height differential between standing and sitting was less than a foot. For this particular someone, the joke never got old.
I looked over at the offender and started scratching an itchy spot on my face with my middle finger. ‘You’ll keep. You just wait till we get home.’
‘Promises, promises,’ Paul said, and gave me a wink.
A wee snort came from the direction of Sonia’s desk.
The opportunity for retaliatory remarks was disrupted by a clamour of voices and footsteps in the hallway. I caught a glimpse of some unfamiliar faces before a more familiar one popped his mug around the corner and indicated for me to come on over.
Grateful for any opportunity to move, I headed towards the door.
‘Sam, do you mind doing us a favour?’
Paul’s approach this morning had been met favourably, so I appeared to be back in the good books. For now.
‘Sure, what do you need?’
Smithy drew me out into the corridor. He indicated with his head towards the soft meeting room – the one where we took victims and family to talk with in a more relaxed setting with comfy sofas, rather than the formal and more intimidating interview rooms down the other side, with their tables and chairs and obvious recording equipment.
‘Look, we’ve got the young woman who abandoned the baby. Well, she’s pretty much a kid. Her mum’s in there too. We’re just waiting for the people from Oranga Tamariki, who are due shortly, but would you mind sitting in with them in the meantime, keep them company till the Ministry folk arrive?’
Oh, that would be a fraught and delicate conversation for both parties. Working for Oranga Tamariki – our Ministry for Children – was another job I wouldn’t be suited to. I feared I would be far too affected by the difficult and often tragic situations they had to deal with to remain objective and impartial. And the weight of responsibility for making decisions about the placement and care of at-risk children would haunt me.
Today, part of me was curious to see what kind of a woman would give up on a baby, abandon it immediately after birth. But part of me also realised that for someone to be that desperate they would also be incredibly vulnerable. Perhaps the concerns raised previously by some others on the team were right in this instance – given my obvious condition, and the risk of triggering overwhelming memories of a very traumatic moment in the mother, maybe I wasn’t the best fit for minding duties.
‘You think I’m the right person at this time, considering?’ I asked, pointing to my middle.
‘Yeah,’ Smithy said, unequivocal. ‘No offence, but I think she needs a woman, and someone completely non-threatening right now.’ He cocked his head, apologetically. ‘Pretty sure they don’t want me in the room. And you might want to take in a box of tissues.’ I could see why an enormous, untidy and slightly BO-ey lump of maleness wouldn’t be the right fit.
‘There’s Sonia,’ I said.
‘True. But of all of the women in the immediate vicinity you’re the one with the most experience of motherhood – limited as it is – so I think you’re it.’ He wasn’t going to take no for an answer, grabbed the nearest box of tissues and presented it to me.
‘Well, if you’re sure.’ I accepted it with reluctance and wandered around the corner into the room.
I was met by two faces: one looked like she’d been awake for twenty-two of the last twenty-four hours, and the two hours of sleep had been of the Nightmare on Elm Street variety. The other resembled a startled possum, a very young startled possum on the verge of tears.
‘Kia ora, I’m Detective Shephard – Sam. I’m just going to sit with you while we wait for the Oranga Tamariki people to arrive. Can I get you anything to drink? Tea, coffee, a water?’
They looked at each other, the mum quietly asking, ‘You right?’
‘I’m good,’ was the whispered reply. She looked anything but.
‘We’re okay for now, thanks,’ the mum responded. ‘I’m Adele. Adele Smythe. And this is Georgia.’
Georgia looked all of sixteen, with her flushed, acne-speckled face, straightened, long blonde hair and braces on her teeth, although she could have been older – or younger, for that matter. I always found it difficult to judge the age of teenage girls with their vast range of maturity and rates of growth. Chuck make-up into the mix and it was nigh on impossible. I’d been this insubstantial height since I was ten and started growing boobs, and back then I looked much older than I was. Hence I got inappropriate and annoying attention from older boys who didn’t realise I was very much under age. Fortunately, my mother had been quite forthright in telling them to fuck off, and in training me to tell them to fuck off. It was one of the few favours she’d done me in life.
You couldn’t really tell that Georgia had recently been pregnant. She was a fairly solid young woman, dressed in baggy-legged, light-blue denim jeans, a loose white jumper and a too-big black puffer jacket over the top of everything. It was pretty much the standard uniform of most female uni students in the city. The clothing helped disguise her midriff, and perhaps she was also one of those people who didn’t show much anyway. I didn’t look pregnant from the back, but from side and front on I looked like I’d swallowed a basketball. So who knows, maybe she’d hidden the pregnancy from her family, and the first they knew about it was when the abandoned-baby headline was splashed all over the news and their little girl confessed? It was something I was dying to ask, but it wasn’t my place, so my almost tabloid curiosity would just have to remain unsatisfied.
‘Hi, it’s lovely to meet you,’ I said. ‘I know you’re here under difficult circumstances today, but I’m not here to question you or anything like that. I’ll just be waiting with you, and I’m here if there are any questions you have about anything.’
The two women were sitting side by side on the small sofa, legs pressed up against each other, bodies leaning into each other, Adele’s hand resting lightly on her daughter’s knee. The body language spoke of solidarity and support, and I felt relieved on Georgia’s behalf that, to outside appearances at least, her mum was on her side. I didn’t think that mine would be quite so forgiving. Of course, all of this first-impressions judginess on my part was working on the assumption that Adele didn’t know in advance her girl was going to dump her baby at the local church. For all I knew it could have been at her parent’s insistence – a way to solve an unexpected problem. I lowered myself into the armchair angled alongside them and wriggled to find a comfortable position.
‘When is your baby due?’ Adele asked.
My hands went into automatic pilot, rubbing the top of the mound, my face curling into a smile. ‘Just over two weeks’ time.’
‘And you’re still at work?’ The tone sounded identical to my mother’s on the same topic. Was there a manual for impending grandmothers that I was unaware of? ‘When do you finish up?’
I noticed Georgia staring at my rather obvious bump and was beginning to regret accepting Smithy’s judgement that I was the most appropriate person for the job. ‘This is my last week, so I get a couple of weeks’ break before baby arrives on the scene.’
‘You’d better hope it doesn’t arrive early, then.’ Yup Mum and her had the same play book.
‘Are you having a boy or a girl?’ Georgia asked, before Adele could continue along the party line. Her voice sounded very young, and I changed my estimation of her age down to fifteen, maybe even fourteen. How did I answer her question? Somehow it felt important to be upfront.
‘I’m having a little girl, but please don’t tell anyone else here. They don’t know.’
That elicited a small smile.
‘Have you decided on a name yet?’ I’d spent many a sleepless night thinking about names. It felt such a responsibility to get it right. A name that would work when they were young and when they were old, one that people could spell and didn’t have extra Ys or Ks thrown in for good measure so the poor sod had to spell it out to all and sundry their entire life. A name that was different, but not whacky, one that had some meaning. Also a name that couldn’t be abbreviated into something crappy, or where the initials spelt out something rude. There was so much to consider.
‘We’ve got a couple of names we’re thinking about, but it really depends on what we feel suits her when she’s born. We might take one look at her and decide, ahhhh, she looks like a Gertrude.’ That dragged out another smile.
‘Are you married?’
‘Georgia, that’s getting a bit personal.’ Adele looked uncomfortable at her daughter’s insistent questions, but I waved her away. The girl was talking, that was a good thing.
‘That’s okay, I don’t mind answering. No. My partner, Paul, and I have been together for a little while now, but we’re not married. I think our parents would prefer that we were,’ I said, ‘but this baby was a bit of a surprise, and we didn’t want to rush a wedding just because we were expecting.’ That turned out a bit more personal than I was intending, but something told me that what this girl needed right now was some frank honesty.
‘So you didn’t plan on getting pregnant?’ I could see the slightly horrified look on Adele’s face, but I gave her a tiny shake of my head, and smiled at Georgia as I gave my response.
‘Hell, no. We had only been together for a little while really, so the last thing I wanted or expected was to get pregnant. But it happened that way, so we talked about it, and decided that yes, we wanted to have this baby and become a family.’
‘I didn’t expect to get pregnant either.’ Georgia’s voice had become very little, and I had to strain to hear her words. She was looking down at her hands. ‘And the boy was really upset and didn’t want me anymore when he found out.’ In that moment I just wanted to reach over there and wrap her in a cuddle. Her mum took her hands, leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. I had to work hard to disguise the lump in my throat when I spoke again.
‘I’m so sorry to hear that, Georgia. It must have been so hard for you.’
‘I didn’t know what to do, I was so scared. I felt I couldn’t tell anyone, not even Mum and Dad, and I’m so sorry about that, Mum, I should have told you.’ Adele didn’t say anything, she just wrapped her arms around her girl and let her cry into her chest.
‘I can understand why you would be scared,’ I said. ‘That’s an awful thing to have happen to anyone, let alone someone your age.’
‘You’re not scared?’ she asked, through the hiccoughs.
I pushed myself up onto the edge of the seat and reached out to touch her knee.
‘Georgia, I’m absolutely terrified. This is the biggest thing that has happened to me in my entire life. I don’t know how to be a mum. I don’t know if I’ll be a good mum – I might be dreadful at it. I worry about the baby and what if something goes wrong. I don’t know how this is going to affect Paul and me, and if that will work out okay. And the thought of giving birth is really scary. To be honest, I’m a nervous wreck.’ Somehow it felt good to say those thoughts out loud. They had been creeping around at the edges of my mind, kept at bay by the inner voice that said, You should be happy Sam, you’re so lucky Sam, this will be amazing Sam, be strong. But the inner fifteen-year-old in me was struggling to deal with the enormity of it all.
‘But you’re a grown up, and in the police.’
‘Yes, but that still doesn’t stop me from being afraid,’ I said. ‘I just have to keep thinking about the good things. That I’ll have a little girl to love, like your mother loves you, and it’s the beginning of a scary but exciting adventure.’
She paused for a bit, before looking at me with serious and sad eyes. ‘Can you understand why I panicked? I didn’t know what to do. Why I didn’t tell them, why I left her there, at the church?’
My God, this young girl gave birth by herself. My mind struggled to grasp at the enormity and tragedy of a teenager feeling she had no choice but to do it alone, and try and hide that it ever happened. This time I couldn’t conceal the tremor in my voice and the overflow in my eyes.
‘Yeah, I understand. And you know, other people will understand too.’
‘I’m scared they won’t let me have her back.’
‘I’ll help them to understand.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’