Free The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers by Angela Patrick

complications with the baby’s father, as he had long since been out of
the picture, happily oblivious to the consequence of our one night of folly. At least I didn’t have to deal with a broken heart on top of everything else.
    But in that respect I was painfully naive. I would soon experience true heartbreak.

Chapter Six
    O n 16 October I celebrated my twentieth birthday. The day was marked, as birthdays are, by a number of cards: one from my mother and stepfather,
two more from my brothers and their families, plus a selection from those good friends and colleagues from Guthrie’s who knew that my extended sojourn in sunny Italy was a fabrication.
    I also received cards from Linda, Pauline and Mary, though the day itself was much like any other. The nuns were quick to discourage anything that might feel too ‘fun’, as being at
odds with the tone of life in the convent and inappropriate, given the gravity of our situation and our need to pay penance for our sins.
    This birthday was something of a watershed: not quite the customary watershed of reaching the magic number twenty-one, with its freedoms and responsibilities, but one that nevertheless marked
the end of my teens and being on the cusp of becoming a grown-up. Except I felt I’d already grown up too much, and another birthday was approaching that was so much more important than mine.
It was now playing on my mind almost constantly. I knew the birth of my baby would mean much more than a new anniversary to go into the calendar; it would haunt me for ever.
    As the days following my birthday took me closer to my baby’s, things were getting more and more difficult physically. I already had some experience of this, albeit vicariously, as
I’d seen several of the girls go into premature labour. The accepted view was that it was often caused by the gruelling work schedule and the sheer brute physicality of what we had to do each
day. No lying around and resting with your feet up was allowed in Loreto Convent. Just as the elderly nuns worked their fingers to the bone, we girls were given no quarter for being heavily
pregnant. Indeed, if anyone dared stop to rest their legs, they would be treated not only with disdain but with nastiness too.
    ‘Look at her, with her airs and graces!’ the nuns would say to each other, always within earshot. ‘What does she think this place is? A hotel?’
    As a girl from a convent school, I should have been used to it. But I never did get used to it. How could I? It seemed to me to be so unnecessarily unpleasant, and so at odds with the accepted
idea of what giving your life to God – what being a nun – meant. Nuns were supposed to personify goodness. Wasn’t that how it was meant to be? So how could nuns – the living
embodiment of kindness and selflessness – behave like such catty playground bullies?
    They seemed to delight in belittling us and scolding us, as if we were lesser human beings because we had not taken the same lofty path they had. So they worked us accordingly. We were expected
to carry on with our duties as normal until the very point we went into labour. More than once I remember privately giving thanks for my assigned job; yes, it was lonely and involved being on my
feet for long periods, but it was nothing compared to manning the huge laundry vats, or endlessly scrubbing already scrubbed floors on your knees. For all of us the punishing schedule felt like a
form of atonement in itself. It seemed designed to ensure that every part of our experience of labour and motherhood etched indelible negative memories on our brains, so we would never do anything
as wicked again.
    Births took place at St Margaret’s Hospital in Epping, three miles away, and our final antenatal appointments were scheduled to take place there, normally for a week or so before our due
dates. As ever, we would travel to our appointments alone on the bus, most of us wearing our ‘wedding’ rings.
    Though things were