‘This happens often, a very similar story repeated. And abused kids become abusers themselves often enough.’

  I nodded absently. ‘I’ve agreed to assist the Evil Roman Empire, and to make a statement that the mother off the Miracle Baby is not a sinner.’

  ‘It seems that she is not…’

  ‘No, but … they have their agenda, I have mine, just that they coincide. Oh, and they’ve put pressure on the Government of Panama to find our aircraft technician.’

  ‘Ingrid has found out that someone she knew was on the plane, and that one of my business customers died on that plane. Sweden is in shock.’

  ‘Given that it was a crime, is the airline liable?’

  ‘The ground maintenance company is separate, and they service several airlines, and they are now liable. But a terrorist attack shifts the blame away from them and to the government of Sweden, and this can be seen as a terror attack – to bring down the aircraft.’

  ‘SAS won’t go bust?’

  ‘No, but the insurance pay-out will be huge. I think they can ask the government for money, a compensation scheme related to terrorist attacks. They will ask the maintenance company for the money and shift the blame.’

  I nodded absently in the chair. ‘I made a statement - that I didn’t blame the airline, and that I would fly with them again.’

  ‘They will be pleased, very pleased, you let them off the hook.’

  ‘I’ll make an advert and they can buy it, me checking-in to an SAS flight.’

  ‘I am sure they would jump at the chance.’

  ‘I’ll fly SAS from here back to Stockholm.’

  ‘Just to make some money?’ he queried.

  ‘No, to get past my fear of flying, if I have one. Because for the rest of my life - if I want to enjoy myself, I need to fly to nice places.’

  He considered that. ‘Yes. So … maybe I fly with you and not sit on a train, because if I think like that then I will not be able to leave Sweden ever again or visit the hotel in Corsica.’

  ‘You’ve had your near miss, and the chances of another one are a million to one against.’

  Ingrid returned with coffee, and we sat chatting about the hotel in Corsica and the planned new holiday village next to it, and it was great to be making plans and not thinking about death.

  Leaving the Rasmussens, I stepped next door to the old lady, different faces in with her now but with the very beautiful Maria in attendance, who beamed a welcoming smile at me.

  I told them, ‘I had a warm shower this morning, so I smell better.’

  ‘I would love a hot bath,’ Hilly told me. ‘This is my son, Michael, and his wife.’

  I smiled and nodded at them.

  ‘How is the baby?’ Hilly asked.

  ‘Being fed by my broody twins. But rumour has it … that they have identified the mother. She was a girl from the Czech Republic, abused by her father as a girl and she ran away, a life of being homeless, fed drugs and forced into prostitution.’

  ‘My god, such a sad story,’ Hilly noted. ‘But these things happen.’

  ‘I don’t blame her any, none at all - she’s the victim in this story. It was a man that abused her, men that fed her drugs, men that used her as a prostitute, a man that got her pregnant, a man that forced her to abandon her baby.’

  Hilly considered that. ‘I had so much anger for that girl -’

  ‘Misplaced anger,’ I insisted.

  She studied me as I stood over her. ‘Yes, misplaced perhaps.’

  ‘If they catch her I’ll go see her, and get the truth, and I’ll use my money to help her.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You would do that?’

  ‘I would, because she’s the victim here, and she deserves the chance at a normal life. If it was in my power … I’d allow her to see the baby.’

  ‘You are a very odd young man,’ Hilly noted.

  ‘And if Maria had been abused, and ran away, and got pregnant, would you have hated her for it?’ I posed.

  Hilly stared at Maria as Maria stood looking shocked at my question. ‘If I did … I would be a terrible grandmother. But here in Italy it is … often done like that, the shame.’

  ‘There’s no shame when a woman is raped, just that in the mind of small people she has been tarnished, no good to marry-off now, soiled and used and … unwelcome in nice houses.’

  Hilly stared up at me. ‘I would hope … that if it happened to a granddaughter of mine … that I would be strong enough to love her anyway. Soiled or not.’

  ‘I would never judge a woman that had been raped, so maybe Italian society has some adjusting to do.’

  Hilly considered that and nodded. ‘We hold onto the old ways, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You may soon have a choice to make, if the mother of the Miracle Baby is welcome in your home. If she is not welcome, I will leave your company forever.’

  Her eyes widened in shock. ‘You would force me to be a better person.’

  ‘I would, so think about it. I get the impression that an arrest is likely very soon.’

  Next door, I greeted the mother and daughter as if they were my own family, the father out somewhere, and I tickled the mother’s feet to some loud but friendly curses.

  An hour later I stepped into Carter as a nurse was massaging his arse.

  ‘Oh my god, I had hoped never to see your lily-white arse.’

  ‘Turn away then.’

  I sat. ‘Sat here I can avoid your hairy crack.’

  ‘What’s happening out there?’

  ‘The wanted man, the technician, is in Panama, the Catholic Church putting pressure on the Government of Panama for his return. And they found the baby’s mother, abused as a kid, homeless and a drug addict – as expected.’

  ‘Same old story,’ he scoffed. ‘See it in London all the time. Does the baby have AIDS?’

  ‘They said no, which is odd given that the mother is a hooker. But apparently a few babies have been born around the world without AIDS, yet born to infected mothers.’

  ‘Odd that, yeah.’

  ‘You feeling better?’ I asked.

  ‘Looking forwards a fucking holiday.’

  ‘We’ll go stay at a lake nearby first, a hotel, and then decide - when we can all walk that is. We can get nurses in, paid privately, massage ladies, private doctors to look us over.’

  ‘How long is the recovery process supposed to be?’ he asked.

  ‘In the UK? Two weeks in hospital, stitches out, sent home with daily therapy, assessment made of any back problems. But it’s just a matter of time, and some gentle therapy, before the pain is bearable enough for us to move around.

  ‘In the UK, old ladies fall down on wet pavements, and that takes six months of therapy, but at our ages we should be up and walking in much less time, just that the pain will take months to subside.

  ‘I think that lying in bed makes it worse, the spinal discs get stiff and stick together, so it’s better to take the pain and to move around.’

  ‘I’ll try that soon,’ he suggested. ‘Getting really fucking fed-up of being in bed.’

  ‘Anyway, the good thing … is that my efforts for a lower profile are going just great.’

  He laughed so loudly he screamed in pain and cursed.

  With the twins gone, some shopping on the cards, I lay down to a nice arse massage from the busty nurse, and I was allowed a good meal. But since the hospital portions were quite small the nurse snuck in two meals for me.

  I had forgotten how hungry I had been these past few days, and I was soon dosing off to sleep, my stomach full.

  At 7pm the twins appeared with the baby, the baby not crying.

  ‘What a sell-out you are,’ I told the chubby lump as they handed her over. ‘I thought I was the special one and here you are snuggling up to just anyone.’

  ‘We feed her and change the nappy, practise for us,’ Rita told me as the baby smiled at me.

  ‘Yeah, well … practise for a few more years, eh, a career in modelling first, then four babies at once.’

  Rita told me, ‘The news in Sweden says that the Pope spoke to the President in Panama, and that the technician has been arrested.’

  ‘That won’t bring back the dead,’ I sighed out. ‘But justice helps to make the families feel a little better.’

  Rita added, ‘They will make a park at the crash site, the grass field, a marble statue, the names of the dead. And the forest workers went back to show the exact spot where the baby was found, there will be a marker there.’

  ‘The hand of God … did not guide me to find the baby, the hand of God guided the mother on just where to dump the baby so that I would find it. That’s their miracle, not this little chubby lump.

  ‘And the Catholic Church, they know about the mother, and I’ll help the mother -’

  ‘You’ll help her?’ Rita protested.

  I fixed Rita with a stern look. ‘She was abused by her father and ran away a teenager, then became homeless, was fed dugs and forced into prostitution, and forced to abandon the baby. Would you send her to prison?’

  She lowered her head. ‘Well, maybe not, no.’

  ‘You had good parents to raise you, but some people don’t get that start in life, so try and understand what happened. Don’t judge her till you meet her and find out the real story.’

  Luka’s prayer

  In the morning I was thinking about the hand of God, and the real story here, and it was not the baby, so I was about to upset the evil Holy Roman Empire.

  At 10am I headed out of my room, the twins in tow, and I was dressed as before in hospital blue, and again barefoot. I carried the baby down to the main entrance, but this time I was hands-free and benefitting from a baby harness that the nurses had provided.

  The baby was in front of me, suspended in the harness, her chubby legs on show today, her arms free to flap about. I held her with one hand and spoke to her, hoping that she would not cry because she could not see me, but the baby had come out of her shell and was now greatly more accepting of other people.

  The police opened the doors and moved people back, the crowd outside getting a look at me and cheering, the nuns seemingly still stood there although I had no idea if it was the same group of nuns – and did they not have anything better to do?

  At the nuns, I let them touch the baby’s feet again, ten minutes used up as the crowd all snapped me, and it seemed that every single one possessed a camera and was now using it.

  Stepping to the media, I pointed at who I recognised to be Italian television, the same company name as I saw on the nightly news here. I asked the cute lady presenter, ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I waved out her crew, but I stood in a spot where the other crews could film me – those keen crews being less than ten feet away, and I called for quiet, waving people down. It fell quiet as I faced the lady presenter.

  ‘What I can tell you today … is that the mother of the baby has been identified and may soon be taken into custody by Italian authorities, but I hope they treat her well – very well.

  ‘What the people here don’t yet know … is that the mother, known as Luka, came from the Czech Republic and had been sexually abused by her father.’

  The lady interviewer lost her smile.

  ‘She ran away from home and ended up homeless, got involved with drugs and was reportedly forced into prostitution to make money to live and to feed herself and this baby.

  ‘We know that she was here in Italy with her boyfriend and pimp, and that he controlled her and fed her drugs, and that when she was unconscious he let men have sex with her for money.

  ‘We don’t know yet who the father is, but the baby does not appear to be Italian, so maybe the boyfriend and pimp was the father.

  ‘I suspect that he forced Luka to abandon the baby, and the note she left supports that idea, because no mother would give up a baby unless at knifepoint and under threat.’

  I took in the bank of cameras aimed at me. ‘I hope that the authorities here will let me speak to Luka, to get to the truth behind what really happened, and how this baby came to be abandoned in the woods.

  ‘I was raised Christian, but I am not a religious man. But I feel that I need to correct the story here, and to point out to the people here that the miracle is not this baby.

  ‘It is a miracle that she is alive, yes, but the hand of God – as some people here have been describing it – did not guide me, nor the pilots trying to safely land the aircraft, nor the technician in Sweden who tampered with the aircraft.

  ‘I do not believe … that if there is a god, that he would sacrifice a plane full of innocent Swedish people to save one baby.

  ‘Christians believe that God gave them free will, and that he does not interfere – not usually. So as a non-believer … but being someone that has studied the Bible, I don’t think that God had a hand in crashing the plane, I think our free will allowed that technician to tamper with the plane; it was man being cruel to his fellow man.

  ‘I do not believe that I was fated to be on the aircraft, but I am oddly pleased that it was me finding the baby, not for the sake of the baby, but for the sake of the mother, Luka.

  ‘That young woman was abused by her father, made homeless, fed drugs, and she was probably forced into prostitution. She is my interest here, and I aim to find the truth about her story, and about how our modern society treats her.

  ‘I already know that Italian society tends to shun a woman that has been raped and teenage girls that fall pregnant, and that’s wrong.

  ‘In my home town … I’m spending some of my own money, and money raised by a British newspaper, to help the homeless and the drug addicts, most of whom ended up on the streets through no fault of their own.

  ‘I do not blame nor condemn any homeless person or drug addict, and I most definitely would never shun a woman that had been raped, and families that do shun such a woman are – in my mind – soulless monsters.

  ‘This is a Christian country, followers of Jesus, yet it was Jesus who stopped the stoning of a prostitute. Here, in modern day Italy, and before knowing the truth, many people wanted to stone the mother of this baby, to stone the prostitute.

  ‘I will not be casting stones at the mother, I will be offering her my legal team and paying for her criminal defence team, because I think she is the innocent person here, and that her life choices were made for her.

  ‘I think she had a choice to make, to abandon the baby as demanded by her pimp, or see that pimp kill the baby. By abandoning the baby in the forest there was at least a chance that someone might hear the baby crying and rescue it.

  ‘I’m certain … that any mother of a baby, faced with the same difficult choice, would take the chance and pray for a miracle … rather than see her baby murdered in front of her eyes.

  ‘How many mothers, here in Italy, would chose to have their baby killed, rather than cling to hope and pray for a miracle?

  ‘But that’s what Luka got, she got a miracle, she got what she prayed for. The chances of a plane crashing next to the baby were a billion to one against. The chances of anyone getting off the plane were very low, and the chances of me hearing the baby were also very low.

  ‘The hand of God … was not guiding that plane, nor guiding me, the fate of that plane had been sealed by our free will, by mankind’s ability to be cruel to his fellow man.

  ‘Luka could have chosen any hillside within twenty miles, any field or roadside, but I think that the isolated hill was chosen for her by her pimp.

  ‘I doubt that the decision was left solely to Luka, since the boyfriend seems to have wanted the baby to perish – not be placed on the steps of a church and taken into care.

  ‘He did not want the child to live, maybe because it carried his DNA, the DNA of a wanted man apparently. He could have easily had the child taken into care rather than journey up a mountain at night and chose where to hide the baby, to hide it where it would not be found.

  ‘I have little doubt, seeing the letter that Luka left with the baby, that she wrote that note in secret and smuggled it into the baby’s cot. And as she did so, she would have wished and prayed that someone would find this baby.

  ‘The miracle here, for those that believe in miracles, is that her prayer was seemingly answered, a wish carried out by some divine intervention.

  ‘The hand of God … did not crash that plane, nor guide me nor give me the strength to get off that plane. No, the hand of God guided Luka and her pimp as to where to place the baby.

  ‘This baby is not the miracle, this baby is the innocent party in the equation, not capable of asking for help, not old enough to understand what was happening or the dangers present.

  ‘The miracle … the event that was a trillion to one against happening, was Luka placing the baby at a random location, at a time when she desperately wanted the baby to be found.

  ‘With a little divine assistance, Luka somehow placed the baby just ten yards from where a plane would come to rest. The chances of choosing the right direction to drive, then choosing the right hill, then choosing the correct part of the woods … are so small that even a sceptical mathematician would have to stop and puzzle it.

  ‘If the people here, and the Church, wish to accurately label the mathematical chances of improbability as being a miracle, then they need to label the placing of the baby by Luka as the miracle here. The other series of events simply followed on the next morning.

  ‘I hope to speak to Luka soon, and today I’ll be talking with my legal team. And I take this opportunity to appeal to the Italian police and prosecutors to take good care of Luka, because she is not what she appears to be; she is probably innocent.

  ‘It was a man that abused her, a man that made her homeless, a man that fed her drugs, a man that forced her into prostitution, men that had sex with her, a man that forced her to abandon her baby.