Free Shape-Shifter by Pauline Melville

outside the hospital.
    Three-quarters of an hour later, Sonia looked down from her window into the yard of the flats when she heard the engine of a taxi ticking over. Alerted by a phone call, she had the money ready and ran down to pay off the cab. Winsome was climbing out of the cab awkwardly with the scrap of a baby in her arms.
    Winsome rested exhaustedly in the low chair by the television, sipping a cup of tea. Her two daughters plucked and nuzzled and clambered over her and their new brother. Sonia stood at the stove frowning through her square-rimmed spectacles and pushing back the shoulder-length beaded extensions on her hair. The action of the judge in jailing Winsome more or less the day the baby was expected had so enraged Sonia that she dismissed the consequences of helping her. She looked through the doorway at the heavy, defeated shape of the woman in the chair:
    ‘What are we gonna do?’ asked Sonia. Winsome shrugged. Denzil yawned and she automatically loosened the blanket round him so that he could stretch his legs and kick a little. Then she dozed again. From the kitchen window Sonia saw the police car arrive in the yard. Her heart beat faster. The car remained in the yard, its blue light spinning, while two policemen ran up the five flights of stairs to where Winsome lived. It was the flat above Sonia’s. Sonia heard the sound of the door being forced and then the sound of footsteps wandering about over her head. She watched as they left. Winsome slept. Sonia tried to telephone Junior but there was no reply.
    At one o’clock the two women watched with fascination as a picture of Winsome appeared on the mid-day news programme. A suitably grave and concerned newscaster made the following announcement:
    ‘The Home Office is concerned over the welfare of a twenty-five-year-old woman prisoner who escaped from a hospital in north London early today only hours after giving birth to a baby son. The Home Office fears that the woman may be suffering from post-natal depression and the baby is said to have infantile hypothermia. The Home Office want the woman and child to be returned to custody as soon as possible so that they can be properly cared for and given the attention they require.’
    Winsome was sitting upright:
    ‘What did they say was wrong with the baby?’ she asked Sonia. She unwrapped the child and examined him carefully. He slept contentedly. ‘I can’t see anything wrong with him.’ The words had sounded ominous, like those other mumbo-jumbo words Levi had warned her about in the courtroom.
    ‘That’s just a trap to get you back into jail,’ said Sonia shrewdly. Winsome hugged her baby and at the same time managed to wipe down Chantale’s face with the corner of a handkerchief:
    ‘I’ll have to go back in the end, I suppose,’ she said, recognising the inevitable. Sonia wanted to make her outrage known, to make some sort of protest. It was Sonia who began to cry. She sat on the brown leather pouffe wiping the tears from the corner of her eyes:
    ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I don’t go in for all this Rasta business but sometimes what Levi says is true. They are wicked, evil people these Babylon people. If you’ve got to go back there then we should make one gigantic fuss about it. You must get ‘pon de television and mek dem see what these people dem a do to you. Mek dem see you side of the story.’ In her excitement, Sonia slipped back and forth from cockney to patois.
    ‘Does Junior know about the baby?’ asked Winsome suddenly.
    ‘Junior don’t even know you got a sentence yet. Everything happen so quick. I phone him but he ain’ there. What do you think – shall I ring up the television people or do you want to try and stay out?’
    ‘I won’t be able to stay out long, not with the baby, so you can do what you like. Just let me stay here the night and I’ll go back tomorrow.’
    Winsome was enjoying being in a place of colour after the arid courtroom, the drained grey