The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers Read Free

look. ‘Now that’s done, Sister Teresa will take you straight up to your room. You’ll be
sharing with Mary, another expectant mother.’ She stood up now. ‘She has a due date close to yours,’ she finished. ‘Now come along.’
    I followed her along a passage to another, smaller staircase, struggling now with my heavy case. I didn’t need to worry about keeping up: Sister Teresa, for all her presence, was actually
quite frail and was finding the stairs as challenging as I was. After climbing two flights and walking single file along a thin upstairs passage to the very end, we reached the door to the room in
question.
    The room was tiny – no bigger than twelve feet by ten – and furnished very sparsely. It held two hospital-style beds, each of which had a hospital-style locker, in which it was clear
we’d need to keep all our possessions. Except for a chipped washbasin under a sash window framed by faded curtains and a wooden chair, there was nothing else in the room.
    Nothing, that is, bar a delicate-looking girl, who had fair hair and slightly protruding front teeth. She’d been sitting on the left-hand bed, writing a letter, but had leapt to her feet,
startled, as we entered. Though smiling shyly at me, she looked flustered, which wasn’t surprising: Sister Teresa hadn’t announced our arrival. As I would soon find out, the nuns never knocked.
    ‘Mary, this is Angela Brown,’ Sister Teresa explained. Then, to me, ‘Angela, this is Mary Bourke. You two will be sharing a room until your babies are delivered.’
    What would happen after that, she didn’t say. She moved aside to let me pass her and enter the room properly. I smelt dampness. Mary smiled again and gestured towards the other, empty bed.
She was petite, and wore a pinafore-style dress, underneath which was a hand-knitted jumper. In contrast to my intentionally well-disguised bump, hers, to my eye, looked enormous. What a relief it
would be, I decided on seeing it, to give my own poor, squashed baby some room to move about. I’d been so fearful for so long about the damage I might be doing that when the baby had first
kicked me, as well as a wave of profound relief, I felt it might have been in angry protest.
    ‘Now, Mary,’ Sister Teresa continued, in a voice that, though directed at Mary, was also designed to make it clear to me that I mustn’t assume she was as frail as she appeared.
It occurred to me that my new roommate probably knew it already. ‘I’d be grateful if you could kindly show Angela the bathroom, and familiarise her with the timetable of our daily
routine here. Once you’re done, and Angela has unpacked her belongings, will you please bring her back down, so I can show her the work she’ll be doing while she’s
here.’
    She turned to me then. ‘You’ll find me in the milk kitchen, which is where you’ll be working. Mary will be able to show you where that is.’
    I’d never heard of a milk kitchen before, and immediately an image of a cattle stall, complete with a row of placid Friesians, came to mind. It was an image that in other circumstances
might have made me smile. A smile didn’t reach my lips now, though. It didn’t dare.
    Mary nodded and promised we wouldn’t be long. With a short nod in return, Sister Teresa swept out.
    Once we were alone together, the air no longer chilled by the nun’s frosty presence, I felt inexplicably calm and relieved. In anticipation, this place had seemed such a terrifying
prospect, yet now I was here it felt as if a weight had lifted. This was the first time, I realised, that I was in the company of someone who was in exactly the same dire straits as I was; someone
who could not only sympathise but also empathise with me; someone who knew what I was going through because she was going through it too. It felt such a relief that I could be honest about my
situation. At last I had a confidante, and so did Mary.
    She sat down again as I hauled my suitcase onto my