Nobody expected anything to happen that evening. Nothing at all. Mr. Woodby especially was expecting a quiet Thursday evening, sitting on his strange old worn stripy chair with a pork pie, listening intently to the wireless. Then came the knock.

Mr. Woodby didn’t have many friends, but he was a man who kept himself to himself, and didn’t expect visitors except the postman, milkman and old Mrs. Pettigrew who delivered his pork pies daily. So you could imagine how astonished he was when he opened the door and found a shriveled up old woman, shrouded in a black cloth, mist encircling her ankles. In her arms there was another black-clothed person, obviously a small child or even a baby. Mr. Woodby coughed. “Good evening?” He said, worriedly. “Can I, erm… help you?”

Without warning the old lady pushed the small parcel like child into his arms and in a puff of smoke she was gone. Or was she. Mr. Woodby could still feel her icy cold presence hanging in the air, and smell her musty stench of mothballs. He was bewildered. Surely this child wasn’t anything to do with him? Perhaps the woman had made a mistake, come to the wrong door number or something. Or world!  Mr. Woodby laughed under his breath as he placed the baby on his doorstep and banged the door shut without a backward glance.

An hour later, when Mr. Woodby was just listening to a BBC radio 4 documentary on hypnotism, the deathly shrieking of the baby that had been going on for an eternity, stopped. It wasn’t that Mr. Woodby was cruel; he just didn’t want to be caught up in a struggle where the police would have to be involved. He wasn’t worried about the child until he heard a strange sort of happy bubbling sound. A sound he hadn’t heard for a long time. Laughter. Mr. Woodby crept from the living room and over to the front door. He opened it. There, before his tired grey eyes was a joyful sight of the tiny baby fast asleep. It’s tiny snoring breaths were the sweetest music Mr. Woodby had ever heard. His heart lifted. Just then, a beautiful robin fluttered down from the heavens and landed on her heaving chest. “Robin,” Mr. Woodby whispered, picking the baby up. “I’ll look after you.”