The orphanage, another multistory brick building, was looming large and forbidding in front of us. It looked dark and vaguely menacing to me. Similar to what I would have imagined a prison to look like, in those times.

Even Natty appeared uncharacteristically subdued as we walked up to the huge cast-iron gate.

Natty pressed the door bell. After what felt like minutes, a woman answered the door.

"What do you want?" she asked us gruffly.

It did not get any better from there on. It took a lot of explaining and downright pleading on Natty's part for us to finally be granted an audience with the director of the institution, a broad-shouldered ruddy-faced man who exuded the unmistakable odor of alcohol. He explained to us that no, he had no information about Natty's history other than what was in her old file. Which more or less amounted to one single entry recording the fact that Natty had been found as an infant deposited on a bench just outside the orphanage. The child, wrapped in a warm blanket but otherwise unprotected from the cold, had been spotted by a former employee of the orphanage, Thea Alcott. And no, they were not entitled to give out any information that might enable people to contact former employees of the orphanage.

We were about to leave when I got the brilliant idea of mentioning the Chochet Foundation. The director might not be aware of the fact that Natalie Fogg was the recipient of a prestigious scholarship from the Chochet Foundation, I told him. A scholarship that enabled her to study at an academy for specially gifted young girls, the well-known St. Albert's Boarding School for Girls. What's more, the people from Chochet might be interested in hearing about the orphanage where Natalie had grown up. They might even be inclined to recommend this institution for enhanced financial support from the Ministry of Science and Education.

The latter part was, of course, pure fantasy. But it worked. The director suddenly became extremely friendly, to the point where he offered us something to drink. He insisted on talking to Natty at length about St. Albert's and her academic achievements.

Half an hour later we left with Thea Alcott's current address copied onto a slip of paper.

It took us another thirty minutes to reach that place: a middle-class single-family home located in a suburb on the outskirts of London. A woman in her thirties answered the door.

"You are looking for my mum? Usually, she will be at the library this time of day."

She gave us directions to the local library.

That is where we finally found Ms Thea Alcott. There were about twenty people sitting in the reading room, the majority of them female, but Natty recognized her old mentor immediately. Her face lit up. She walked over to where the old woman was sitting and gently tipped her on the shoulder to get her attention.

"Thea?" she whispered.

The old woman looked up from her book. Her eyes widened.

"Oh my god! Natty? Child, is that you?"

Natty, who appeared to be temporarily unable to speak, merely nodded.

When people started to look at them disapprovingly, Thea got up from her chair and the three of us went outside.

"I can't believe how much you have grown, child," the old woman gushed, pulling Natty into a hug. "But where have you been, all those years? I was so worried when I heard that you had run away."

As we walked back to Thea's home, Natty told her everything that had happened after she had run away from the orphanage.

At Thea's place, we sat down at the living-room table. Her daughter served us cookies and coffee and lemonade before she left to pick up her two kids from school.

"There is something I need to tell you, Natty," Thea began, after her daughter had left. "About that night, when you were delivered to the orphanage. This is something I have never told anybody before." Her gaze went from Natty to me and back to Natty. "Are you sure that you want your friend to hear about it, too?"

Natty shrugged. "I can see no reason why Cathy should not know about it. Anyhow, I'd expect there is not that much to tell, is there? You stepped outside for a smoke or something and found me, a toddler, lying on that bench."

Thea shook her head. "That's just the version of it that I told everybody. But it is not what really happened, Natty." She took a deep breath. "It was past eleven, and in the orphanage all the children had been put to bed already. I was on night duty, that day. September 25. I shall never forget that date. Anyhow, the door bell rang, and when I opened, a young man was standing there, in the rain. In his arms he was holding a small child wrapped in a bundle of blankets. I urged him to come in, if only to get the child and him out of the pouring rain. He hesitated, but then he stepped inside. By the light of the room, I noticed that he was badly hurt, his sweatshirt and one leg of his trousers were drenched with blood. The child, a little girl, was fast asleep. I helped him lower her into an easy chair."

Thea went on to tell us how the man had asked her to take in the child.

"If you care about the life of this child, you must take her in," he had pleaded.

"But what about you? Are you her father?" she had asked. And when he had failed to answer her question: "What about her mother, then? You don't want to leave the child alone like that, with strangers."

"It is not a matter of what I want or do not want, anymore." The young man had sounded bitter. "Perhaps it never was."

"What the hell are you even talking about?" Thea had been nearly at the end of her patience, at that point. "You are badly hurt. You have to go to a hospital right away. Everything else can be discussed later."

"If I go to a hospital now, I will live not through the night." He had laughed. "Not that that is likely to happen, anyway." The young man had looked and sounded feverish. "Look, lady, you have got a decision to make, here and now. I ask you to take in the child and to tell everybody that you found her outside, in front of the door. Do not tell them about me at all. Trust me, it is better for the child, that way."

He had taken something from his pocket and handed it to Thea. A signet ring.

"Give her this when she is old enough. Maybe it will prove helpful. As for myself, I am rapidly running out of time."

He had bent to kiss the child on her cheek. Then he had left.

"I told everybody that I had found you outside, on a bench," Thea concluded her story. "A week later, the director of the orphanage received a telephone call, from the police. It turned out that they were calling up all the orphanages and hospitals to inquire if a young child had been delivered to them on the night of September 25. I happened to be in the room when they called. The director asked me, when had that toddler had been found? I said I found you on the night of September 23." She sighed. "I guess I will never know for certain if what I did was right. I had to make a decision that night, and I did. I decided to trust that young man. But that may have been wrong. Maybe he was some sort of a criminal. Or misguided. He had a slight Irish accent, so maybe he was from the IRA. Maybe he had been involved in some kind of terrorist attack. What I feared much more was that the child had been abducted or kidnapped. I obsessively watched and read the news afterwards but I never found anything about a missing child that would have fit the description."

Natty got up and hugged her. "I am sure you did the right thing, Thea."

"I hope so, child. I really hope so." She handed Natty the signet ring. "Here, take this. It was meant to be yours. Which reminds me: there was something else you had on you when that man delivered you into my care."

From a drawer she retrieved a tiny wristband, small enough to fit around a baby's wrist. On the fabric there was an emblem resembling two crossed lilies, and the letter 'I', followed by the number forty-one.

"I would like to keep this, though, if you don't mind. It does not appear to be of any value."

Natty assured her that yes, of course she could keep the tiny wristband.

We said good-bye to Thea a bit later. Thea gave us her address and phone number, so we could keep in touch.

Outside her house, we started to run. We both knew that we were already terribly late.

When we finally returned to the bus that would take us back to St. Albert's, everybody – the driver, the four teachers and the fifty-eight other students – were waiting for Natty and me. It turned out that they had been waiting like that for more than an hour already.

Ms Gablins, who happened to be one of the teachers supervising us on our excursion, was furious.

"Hart and Fogg. Finally. Hurry up and get on the bus."

As I was about to step on the bus, she slapped my backside, hard.

"Ow," I protested.

Passersby who were watching that little scene were grinning. My cheeks grew hot.

"There's plenty more where that came from, Hart," the teacher hissed as she slapped my behind a second time.

I hurried to get on the bus.

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A / N :  Thank your for taking the time to read this chapter, I really appreciate that.

As always, I would be happy to read your feedback, in the form of comments or as a PM.