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the story of her life, which was what he did to her, after all.
    The dog tried to follow but Dr Hunter shut the door in her face without saying anything to her, which was so not Dr Hunter, and an exiled Sadie sat down outside the door and waited patiently. Ifa dog could frown she would have frowned.
    After the woman left, Dr Hunter had a funny, tight look on her face as ifshe was trying to pretend that everything was normal when it wasn't.
    Now there was a new card on the noticeboard. It was embossed with 'Lothian and Borders Police', a phone number and a name, 'Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe'.
    Reggie fed the baby a yoghurt, not regular yoghurt but a special organic baby yoghurt, no additives, no sugar, nothing artificial. She finished it off for him when he lost interest in it.
    Outside, it was cold and damp but in the kitchen it felt cosy and safe. There were no Christmas decorations up yet, just the Advent calendar they had bought on the baby's birthday, but Reggie could imagine the scent of pine and clemen tines and log fires and all the other good smells that she was sure Dr Hunter would fill the house with any day now. It would be Reggie's first Christmas with Dr Hunter and the baby and she wondered if there was any way she could go about suggesting that she should spend Christmas Day itself with them rather than on her own or with the Hussains. Nothing against the Hussains or anything but they weren't herfamily. And Dr Hunter and the baby were.
    Sadie waited patiently at the side of the high-chair. Every time the baby dropped any food she licked it off the floor. Sometimes she managed to catch it in mid-air. She had a lot of dignity for a dog hustling for scraps. ('She's starting to get old,' Dr Hunter said sadly.)
    Reggie gave the baby a finger of wholemeal toast to chew on while she washed his bowls, by hand because she didn't trust the dishwasher with them. The baby's dishes were real china in an oldfashioned pattern. His toys were tasteful wooden ones -nothing garish or noisy -and his clothes were all expensive and new, not handed down or bought in second-hand shops. A lot of them were French. Today he was wearing the cutest-ever navy blue and white striped all-in-one ('his matelot outfit' Dr Hunter called it) that reminded Reggie of a Victorian bathing suit. He had a Noah's Ark rug in his room and a nightlight in the shape of a big red and whitespotted fairy toadstool. His sheets were embroidered with sailboats and there was a framed sampler above his bed with his date of birth and his name 'Gabriel Joseph Hunter' in pale blue chain stitch.
    The baby wasn't afraid of anything except unexpected loud noises (Reggie wasn't too keen on those either) and he could clap his hands ifyou said, 'Clap your hands,' and ifyou said, 'Where's your red ball?' he would crawl to his toy box and find it. He had just yesterday taken his first wobbly but unaided step. (,One small step for mankind, one giant leap for a baby,' Dr Hunter said.) He could say the word 'dog' and the word 'ball' and 'banky', which was his word for his most precious possession -the little square cut from a blanket that had been bought for him before he was born by Mr Hunter's sister, a pale green ('moss', Dr Hunter said) blanket to suit either sex. Dr Hunter told Reggie that 'actually' she had known what sex the baby was but she hadn't told anyone she knew, not even Mr Hunter, because she 'wanted to keep the baby all to herself for as long as possible'. Now the green blanket ofwhich the baby was obsessionally fond had been cut down to make it more manageable. 'His Winnicottian transitional object,' Dr Hunter said mysteriously. 'Or perhaps it's his talisman.'
    It had been his first birthday a week ago and, to celebrate, the three of them (not Mr Hunter, he was 'all tied up' and anyway 'it's not as if he knows it's his birthday, Jo ') had driven to a hotel near Peebles for afternoon tea and the waitress had made a big fuss of the baby because he was so