The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert

baby at any minute,” he said. He examined her body more closely and saw that the nipples had been modeled as finely as the rest, the dark brown areolae stippled with tiny bumps, the painted trace of a hair. But it was only when he ran his hand down her massively distended belly, startled by the unexpected warmth of it, that he felt what he might never have seen with the naked eye.
    “Well I never,” he said. “There’s a join here. Look at this, David. Just look at this. There’s a kind of seam.” As he spoke he pressed the palm of his hand against the surface of the woman’s belly. There was a faint click from deep within the figure and the belly opened like a split fruit to reveal, on one side, what would have been the flesh of the fruit beneath the peel and, on the other side, what would have been the kernel. The flesh was a cushion of fat and veins. The kernel was a curled fetus, the head pressed low against the neck of the womb, the fetus almost, but not quite, an actual child. Part of the placenta had been left across a section of the fetus, like a meaty veil. The Doctor reached down between the woman’s legs and found the vagina dilated. Melissa had put the living baby down on the floor so that she could kneel to see better. Before anyone could stop her, she had crawled as near to the woman as she could get and touched the spot the Doctor’s hand had touched. He saw the baby’s tiny fingers enter and reappear beside the head of the fetus, the baby’s wrist encircled by the vagina of the woman. The baby caressed the head of the fetus with the tips of her fingers and then withdrew her hand and turned to Melissa, who smiled and nodded.
    The position of the woman’s hands and arms reminded the Doctor of something. Her right hand was raised, palm facing out; her left hand was extended, the palm turned up and slightly cupped, as if to make an offering. That was it; she looked like a votive statue, the kind that was used in ancient Greece. Yet the detail of the fetus and veins, the blood vessels and the folds of the vagina, the overall accuracy of the modeling made it clear that her function was also to describe the female body, to inform and explain herself to others. She reminded him of something else, something he had seen recently. In one of the books in his room, perhaps. Yes, that was it. Moving the baby away a little, despite her protests, he closed the woman’s belly around the fetus and then, for safety’s sake, the chest around the woman.
    The children followed him as he ran downstairs towards his study. He was almost at the door when he noticed Morgan at a window at the far end of the corridor. He must have been waiting, the Doctor thought. “Come here,” he shouted. “I’ve got something to show you.” By the time Morgan was in the room, the Doctor had pulled out half a dozen books and was rifling through them, as though he was scared he might forget what he was looking for before he had found it. Morgan stood with the three children, David, Melissa, and the baby, while the Doctor picked up one book and put it down, then picked up another and did the same, increasingly frustrated. “I know I’ve seen her somewhere,” he muttered to himself. Morgan sank down on his knees until his one good eye was level with David, who did not flinch.
    “What’s going on?” he said.
    “We’ve found a woman with a baby inside her,” David said. “She was in a box in the attic.”
    Morgan stood up smartly. “What do you mean, a woman with a baby inside her? A dead woman? A baby? What kind of story is this?” He glanced at the Doctor with unexpected irritation, as though he had been let down. David looked momentarily hurt.
    “No, no,” laughed the Doctor, as though nothing could be less likely. “A model of a woman, made of wax I think although I’m not quite sure, but an absolute cracker. An authentic beauty. Italian, I’d put money on it. Hang on a second until I’ve found what I’m looking