August, Kembleford, 1953

Another rubbish day. These seemed to come in abundance in Kembleford, Sullivan thought, as he kicked a stone across the road with his shiny shoe. No matter how he tried to help, he always seemed to get painted as the bad guy.

Nothing he did seemed to matter anymore. Father Brown solved every crime, and he was just there to slap on the handcuffs and fill in the paperwork. No one came to him for help; they all bypassed the Inspector in favour of the priest, who neglected to share most of the information and left him hopelessly out of loop. Leaving him stupid, irritated and hated.

As he walked home, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched, he couldn't shake of the feeling of uselessness that had sank into him a few days ago. It all just seemed so meaningless. As he looked back at his life, no achievements seemed to jump out at him anymore. He was lonely, rather bored, and feeling very empty.

As he rounded the corner of his cottage he kept his eyes on the ground. He had a very irritating neighbour who seemed to have confused him and the priest, deciding that Sullivan needed to hear everything she'd done that week and then confessing an actual crime to Father Brown.

The key was in the lock when he heard the gravel behind him scattering, and a voice hesitantly calling, "Excuse me?"

He turned around in surprise. There was a young woman standing behind him, dressed in a yellow dress and green coat, with curly coppery hair and big brown eyes like an owl.

"I'm really sorry to bother you," She said, "But are you Edgar Sullivan?"

Sullivan opened his mouth in shock. This girl wasn't from Kembleford - she spoke with a town accent, somewhere like Kent. She didn't fit the category of young women in Kembleford.

"Yes?" He said warily. He'd heard stories of policemen answering a question like that and getting a bullet through the head. That would be something for the woman next door.

The girl didn't shoot. Instead, she blushed profusely, looking very excited.

"Wow... Sorry, this is going to sound weird, but I always wanted to meet you. Well, meet you again I guess." She laughed, "Do you happen to remember pulling a baby out of a dustbin in 1938?"

Sullivan's mouth fell open. "Oh my god!" He yelled, dropping the house key, "Isabella!"

"Yes!" She cried.

He opened his arms and she ran into them, both of them shrieking with excitement. He held her close to him, almost as tall as him now, remembering the way the child had cried as he carried her into the station, remembered her so many times over the years, always wondering what had became of her, whether she'd made it through life at all. And this was her, here she was!

"Oh my god," He said again, pushing her back slightly, "Let me get a better look at you."

He ran a trembling hand down the side of the beautiful face. Those same wide, brown eyes that had watched him so intently all those years ago, all grown up.

"You're so grown up," He gasped, making her giggle, "I knew you would be, but you're still a little baby to me. Christ, you make me feel very old."

Isabella laughed. "Tell me more," She said, "No one can tell me anything about that night, so please tell me more."

"I will, I promise." Sullivan said, hugging her again. "Do you want to come inside? I'll make tea. I need to hear everything - your whole life story."

"You really want to hear all that?"

"Of course I do. I never forgot about you. I always wondered about what happened to you."

She smiled. "I always wanted to find you too." She said, "I used to read the newspaper articles and think about who you were. So I went back to the police station when I was fourteen, but you were gone." She pulled him back into her arms again, "I can't believe I've actually found you!"

He felt like crying with joy.

"You really mean that?"

"Of course! I've no other links, or background, and I knew that you were the first person that ever meant something to me, even though I couldn't remember you. Tell me all about it, please."

"Why don't you come in?" Sullivan said, gesturing to the door, "I'll make tea and we can share stories."

He held the door open. They had tea, then dinner, and he had to keep pinching himself to remember that the excitable girl on his sofa was his Isabella, the baby he'd so often thought about.

"Is it true, though," She asked at one point, interrupting some other conversation they'd been having. Despite only meeting fleetingly eighteen years ago, they had a lot to catch up on. "Is it true that you were the one who named me?"

"Yes." Sullivan agreed, "I was honoured. Was it alright? Do you like your name?"

"Oh I love it. All these years it's been one thing that stuck by me, kept me a person as opposed to some number, an Ann or Pam or some other stupid name they give to orphans." She faced him again, with the brown eyes, "You know something? Kids used to think I was a princess. Ain't that amazing? They called me a princess, even though all the adults called me the dustbin baby. You really saved me in more ways than one, y'know. I can't tell you how great its been at times, to know that there was someone out there who cared enough about me to give me a pretty name."

Sullivan, who had got rather emotional, wiped at his eye with his thumb.

"Wish you knew how great it was for me, looking at the picture of the little baby I found and knowing that I'd named her." He said. "Though I always was worried that you might have preferred Elizabeth."

He kept a photo of him and Isabella at her graduation on the mantlepiece, then one of her and him at a prestigious awards ceremony were he won a medal, beside a few childhood photos that she managed to get copied for him. In return, she had the same ones on her mantlepiece, as well as pictures of the station and Sullivan when he was a constable standing outside it.

In each other, they found a connection that they both craved for years, a voice at the other end of the phone they always wanted to hear, the handwriting on a letter that they always wanted to see.

Life seemed more bearable and purposeful, knowing that the baby he saved was now a wonderful, clever, successful, hilarious, loving young woman determined to seize life by the horns and live it.

Through all her achievements (of which there were plenty already) he felt a paternal pride, and he finally had someone to visit him, and he could proudly tell the nosy, gossiping neighbours the whole story.

Everytime they met, she thanked him again. He shrugged it off, as he did everytime.

"It was basic human instinct." He parroted.

"It wasn't, though. Not every man would open a dustbin and take out a baby."

Sullivan stirred his tea and deliberated.

"But not every dustbin has a baby in it. I was as lucky as you were."