Secrets of the Mummy Concierge by Tiffany Norris

Author:Tiffany Norris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blink Publishing

Chapter 17

Rupert is only a few weeks old and I have to face one of the most challenging days of my career to date. I’d promised myself and Patrick that I would take at least a month off work to concentrate on our newborn, but when I got the call from this client I knew I had to help. For once, I had to put my family to one side to help another.

As I push on the nursery door, spider threads catch my face – a sign that no one has been in here yet. Despite a musty smell of abandonment, the nursery smells as a nursery should – a mixture of newly opened cardboard boxes and talcum powder. I look around cautiously and take in the cot, put together by Michelle’s husband Henry a few months ago, standing proudly in the corner. A blush-pink cashmere blanket is folded carefully over the rails and a miniature toy bunny rabbit with long muslin ears waits expectantly for its new companion in the middle of the mattress.

A half-opened box sits on top of a dresser and I can see a wooden baby gym poking out of it, with tiny half-moons and stars etched into the wood. To the right of the dresser, in little piles, Michelle had started to fold some of the baby’s clothes – perhaps getting them ready to pack into her hospital bag. There is a pink cotton hat folded neatly in half, six baby grows, all with intricate collars and embroidery and tiny pairs of socks, neatly stacked on top of one another in a tower, threatening to tumble.

The sob escapes me before I have even realised. A huge gasping sob that I feel unable to control. Flinching, I hurl my hand towards my mouth, muffling the sounds as much as I can in the fear that Henry might hear me from his office below. Now is not the time to get emotional. I am here to be professional. To carve away at any pain that has been left behind and in some way, try and make it a little bit more bearable.

Michelle had called me a month ago to tell me she was no longer pregnant and that she had had a miscarriage. It was 2am when the mobile by my bed burst into life and I urgently scrambled around, trying to locate it in the dark. Rather than answering the phone to hear hysterical crying, as I would have thought might have happened, Michelle was strangely calm and quiet.

‘I know it’s late and you must think me mad calling at a time like this, but we have just lost the baby. I wanted to let you know as soon as possible so you didn’t waste time doing any more work for us. I know you have lots of other mummies who need your help.’

My initial reaction was to ask her to repeat herself – surely my mind was playing tricks on me in the middle of

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