I pull a paper towel from the holder on the wall and wet it with some cold water.
‘Now this may sting a little, Mia, but I know you’ll be a brave girl. But if you need to squeeze my hand, you can do that, ok?’
Mia stares at me, nods a little again. Her nose is still running and the beads of tears have stuck to her cheeks like dew drops.
I bend down and dab at her knee, but Mia stands still and straight, not moving a muscle.
‘Wow, you are a brave girl, a warrior like Mulan, I think.’ I clean away the mud and gravel stuck to the graze. ‘Do you know Mulan, the Disney princess? I have the DVD at home.’ Behind me, the door to the cubicle opens and a little boy in Thomas the Tank Engine wellies bursts out, bumping into me and almost knocking me over.
‘Slowly, Cameron!’ his mother says as she heaves her bulk around the toilet roll dispenser to emerge from the small cubicle. I can’t help but think it must’ve been a tight squeeze in there for both of them. ‘I’m so sorry, he’s just so enthusiastic about everything,’ she says with pride. ‘Oh, you poor little thing. Did you fall?’ she says to Mia. ‘Oh well, Mummy will make it better. That’s what mummies are for, after all,’ she says delightfully.
I don’t correct her. Instead, I say with a voice matching her in pride, ‘She’s being very brave, aren’t you, Mia? She’s a tough cookie, this one.’
The little boy is splashing more water on the floor than on his hands. The woman smiles at him in glee, then bundles him from the bathroom.
‘There,’ I say to Mia. ‘That’s all clean. Now, let’s blow your nose and see if we can get you that cookie, shall we?’
I grab some toilet roll from the cubicle and hold it to her nose. ‘Blow,’ I say and she does so on command.
I wipe the tears away, then take hold of her hand again to lead her from the bathroom. Her hand is tiny and warm in mine. It feels right, like it moulds perfectly. The queue at the tills has lessened and there is now only one elderly woman in sensible walking shoes waiting for her polystyrene cup of tea. She smiles at us and I smile back, still holding tightly to Mia’s hand.
‘What would you like, Mia? Those chocolate chip cookies look yummy, don’t they? And those ones over there have Smarties in them! Would you like that?’
She raises her hand and points to the Smarties cookie as the old lady moves away.
‘What can I get you?’ says the bespectacled woman behind the till.
‘We’ll have that cookie there, please,’ I say and wink at Mia.
As I pay, I hear a commotion outside. Voices are raised and it sounds like a woman is shouting hysterically. I shrug at Mia and lead her from the café as she munches happily on the enormous cookie, the graze on her knee now forgotten.
A small group has gathered around the gate to the playground, all focused on a woman in tight jeans and a huge sweatshirt that swamps her small frame. It’s the woman I saw picking up dog poo. I also recognise among the group the large woman from the bathroom, who is talking animatedly and then turns to point at the café. She freezes when she sees me. ‘That’s her!’ she says loudly.
The entire group turns towards me, like a pack of lions, their faces feral.
‘MIA!’ the sweatshirt lady shouts and runs towards us.
‘Mummy,’ Mia says and breaks into the first smile I’ve seen since I picked her up out of the dirt. It lights up her entire face like a spotlight and I think to myself how beautiful and pure she is. She breaks loose from my hand and toddles to meet her mum, the cookie still clasped in her hand.
I watch her go, my heart in freefall as our connection is broken, my hand immediately feeling empty.
The woman scoops her into her arms, hugging and kissing her, tears streaming from her eyes in an undignified display of emotion. I want to tell her to calm down, that she’ll frighten Mia, but I am rooted to the spot, this openly demonstrative display paralysing me in its rawness. The love of a mother for her child.
I don’t notice when the group of bystanders gathers around me en masse, blocking me from leaving. A pack of wild dogs, ready to tear me limb from limb.
But I can’t tear my eyes away from Mia.
*
Greg paces around the windowless room, his stride shortened by the lack of space around the bare metal table.
‘What the fuck were you thinking, Maddie? Were you even thinking?’ His hair is sticking up where he has run his hands through it while waiting for the police to finish interviewing me.
I look at the bare grey walls, still confused at why I am even here, in a police station, being accused of trying to kidnap a child. Me. Of all people.
My throat is rubbed raw from trying to explain that I wasn’t trying to take Mia. I was trying to help. I was looking after her. Her mother wasn’t there.
The woman with the small dog was her mother, but had been distracted by the dog and its runny poo, worrying because she only had one poo bag left and the dog was especially active in the toilet department today.
But how was I supposed to know that? All I saw was a little girl with a sore knee in some distress. All I did was take her to the bathroom.
Apparently, the mother had panicked when she couldn’t find Mia and the other mums had spent the whole time we were in the café calling her name and searching the vicinity for her.
‘And you bought her a cookie? That just looked like you were trying to bribe her! What if
