Formula, nappies, two changes, the wooden rattle she likes, and a pale pink blanket.
And I went in through the delivery door at Saltram at half past two, before the staff briefing, with my daughter under my coat.
I knew it was against every rule in that building.
And I want to be completely honest about the rest of it, because when this got told back to me I came out of it better than I deserve.
Leaving an eight-month-old on a folded blanket in a linen store was not safe.
It was not “not ideal.” It was not safe, and I knew it was not safe while I was doing it, and I cleared the floor and moved every heavy thing out of that room and checked her twice and it was still not safe.
I did it because the other option was no rent, and I chose between two frightening things and I picked the one I thought was less likely to end us.
That is not a defence. It is just what happened.
I checked her at a quarter past three and she was asleep.
I checked just after four and she opened her eyes and reached for my face, and I said “a couple more hours, Ferny,” and went back up.
At ten past five the blanket was empty and the door was open.
I want to describe what that does to you and I cannot.
And Priscilla Adelmann was in the service corridor.
Forty-four, front of house manager, and she had her arms folded.
And she said — loudly enough for the pass to hear it: “A woman who hides a baby behind the linen has no business calling herself a responsible mother.”
And then: “When Mr Stroud comes up, you’re finished. And I’ll be making sure that child’s father hears exactly what you did.”
I did not hear most of it.
Because at the end of that corridor the other door was open.
The dark one. The stairs down to the owner’s office.
No member of staff goes down those stairs. It is not a rule anybody has ever had to state.
I went down them.
And the office door was open, and Wim Stroud was in a chair with my daughter asleep on his chest.
Sixty-eight years old, in his coat, with one hand flat on her back.
And he looked up and said: “Is she yours?”
And I said yes.
And he said: “Right. Sit down. You’ve got about an hour before this gets complicated.”
How he had her.
His office is directly under the linen store.
He heard her. Through the floor. At about half past four.
He went up, opened that door, found an eight-month-old on a blanket on her own, and picked her up and took her downstairs.
And he did not tell one single person for fifty minutes.
And that is the part everybody asks about and it is the whole story.
What he was doing in those fifty minutes.
He has told me since, in the December, in that same office, and it took him about four goes.
In 1979 Wim Stroud was eight years old and he spent two afternoons a week in the back room of a laundrette on Corran Street, on a coat, behind the machines, while his mother worked the counter.
And in the January of 1980 somebody reported it.
He was in care for eleven weeks.
