The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers Read Free Page B

again. There was a look of real fear on her face.
    ‘But no one can ,’ I reassured her. ‘I mean, I don’t know that, obviously, but I don’t see how anyone could, not if you don’t tell them.’ I
squashed all my things I could into the locker. The rest – the baby things, which I wouldn’t need for a while yet – could stay in the case.
    ‘I know. I’m probably worrying too much. It just gets to you, this, doesn’t it? But what about you?’ she asked. ‘What about your baby’s
father?’
    Peter, I thought. I didn’t even think of him in those terms. And why would I? My baby and I were in this on our own. ‘I took a risk,’ I told her. ‘I was silly. I just
never thought . . .’ I didn’t need to finish the sentence. She was already nodding.
    ‘And has he supported you? Are you with him still?’
    I shook my head. ‘He doesn’t even know,’ I said. ‘We’re not together. It wasn’t serious. By the time I found out I was pregnant, we’d already split up.
So I suppose I don’t have all that to deal with.’
    ‘Oh, you’ve more than enough to deal with. We all have,’ she said. ‘But we must hurry.’ She jumped up. ‘There’s room for your case underneath
your bed – just, I think. Here, let me help you. There you go. Sister Teresa will be waiting, and she doesn’t like to be kept waiting. I can show you the bathroom as we go.’
    ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked, as we left the little room – my new home – and retraced our steps along the corridor.
    ‘A week,’ she said. ‘A very long week.’
    ‘And what job have they given you?’
    ‘Cleaning,’ she said. And then she grinned at me. ‘So whatever the state of our souls, at least the floors shine.’
    ‘How is it? I mean, generally. Is it as bad here as it seems?’
    We’d turned a corner now. Mary put her hand on an adjacent doorknob. ‘You’ve experience of nuns?’
    I nodded. ‘Oh, yes. I went to a convent school.’
    ‘So think that, only more so, since we’re all in a state of mortal sin now and must atone. Anyway, voilà . Grand, don’t you think?’
    I peered in. As with everything here, the bathroom was basic. A large basin, a toilet and a chipped enamelled cast-iron bath sat on a black and white tiled floor, surrounded by plain grey-white
walls. You could feel the cold coming off them. I touched one. It was icy. The bathroom was shared, Mary told me, by about twenty of us.
    ‘So it’s a bit of a scrum in the mornings,’ she said. ‘Not that anyone wants to linger, as you can imagine.’
    We then returned down a back staircase to the ground floor. Here we took a route through another maze of passages until we came to the milk kitchen and, as promised, Sister Teresa. She was
standing by a long Formica worktop, filling baby feeding bottles with formula milk, wearing a large apron and starched cotton over-sleeves to protect her habit from splashes.
    ‘Now then,’ she said to me, once Mary had been dismissed and had returned to our room. ‘As Mary’s probably told you, all the girls who come here have duties assigned to
them, and you will be working here in the milk kitchen. Starting tomorrow.’
    Sister Teresa then went on to describe, in dizzying detail, the nature of the duties I’d be expected to carry out, which sounded like they would dominate most of the waking hours of every
day. Pregnant mothers, who did not yet have babies to care for, could be under no illusions. ‘Here in the convent,’ Sister Teresa explained, ‘you will be expected to work just as
hard as we do; to rise early and use the day productively just as we do; to attend mass and to ask the Lord’s forgiveness.’ I noticed she didn’t tag ‘just as we do’ on
the end of that last one.
    Apart from the endless standing, which was tiring because my legs and ankles became increasingly sore and swollen, I soon learned I had got off reasonably lightly. Some girls had been assigned
much more punishing duties,