Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man.
The children were singing.
They were all so tiny.
She saw them through the chicken wire fence; small and soft and shrieking. Down the blisteringly orange slide, clambering onto the dusty tire swing.
She checked her wristwatch; half past three.
Already, the group of mothers gathered round, clutching oversize handbags, were exchanging goodbyes, calling for their children.
And then she saw him.
He had a round, earnest face, still cushioned in rolls of baby fat, a firm little chin. Tufts of fair hair that curled. His nose was long and straight, his lips full and pink. His eyes were long and slanted and brown. Her eyes.
She watched as a woman moved towards him. The woman was short and sturdy. Her eyebrows were thick and unruly, and her hair was straight and brown and cut in a bob. She wore a brown shirt and sludgy green trousers and the contours of her body sloped and strained against the cotton.
She watched as they strolled away from the playground, watched as they hesitated before the busy road.
She stepped forward.
She wondered how she looked to them. Shabby, perhaps. Her white shirt was tucked into the waistband of her grass-stained jeans. Her trainers were battered and weatherworn. Her dark hair was cropped close to her skull. She was wearing sunglasses and haphazard lashings of makeup.
"Excuse me," she said. "Excuse me."
The woman glanced at her, and then at the road. She looked down at the boy and scrubbed at his chocolate-stained cheek with the sleeve of her shirt. "Yeah?"
She swallowed. Her heart was pounding, pounding, pounding. She opened her mouth.
And then she closed it.
She remembered, vividly, the impersonal sterility of the hospital room. She remembered the papers, and how the nurse had fished a blue ballpoint pen from her handbag for her to use. She remembered how her body had felt, sore and pulpy and throbbing dully.
The crib, and the baby. Soft flailing arms and legs and tiny features and a tiny face red with tears. Gurgles. Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop. A kiss and a hug and a hasty signature on the dotted line. Take him away now, please.
She opened her mouth again, and this time, the words came out in a hasty flow.
"I'm sorry." She met the woman's gaze and smiled and looked down. "I though you were someone else."
She looked down at the boy for a moment. She walked away.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
And she sat down on a nearby bench and listened to the children sing.