Byline: JULIE WHEELWRIGHT

When Kate was serving six months on remand in 1994, she often relived her daughter's birth. In her fantasy, she rang emergency services, called out for help, went to hospital. 'I kept thinking, if only I'd had the courage to speak to someone when I was pregnant or afterwards,' she says now. But in reality, Kate (not her real name) endured 17 hours of labour to deliver her baby, who was breech, alone in a rented room. When the baby began to cry, Kate - then aged 21 - panicked and placed a hand over her daughter's mouth, pinched her nose and smothered her.

For the next seven weeks, Kate went to work, zombie-like, keeping up appearances but returning home at night to the room where her baby's body lay hidden. One night at the pub with friends, she explained away her leaking breasts as a spilt drink. Finally, she was set to move in with her boyfriend (not the father of her baby) and took the bag to wasteland where she placed it in a water-filled ditch. She was seen and soon after, the police knocked on her door. She was charged with murder and questioned late into the night. In shock, she begged for the interview to end. 'There was a woman police officer there,' says Kate who has now settled into a new life after serving three years' probation for infanticide. 'She shouted at me: 'You killed your baby, for God's sake, what do you expect?' ' Such tragedies make gripping copy but the voices of the women themselves - often teenagers - are rarely heard. The press and courts still slot them into the ancient categories of 'wicked or absolutely crackers', says Kate, and the reality of their experience is overlooked. But women who have managed to conceal a pregnancy, deliver a baby on their own and then abandon or kill it are experts at ignoring unpleasant realities. Most are simply unable to explain their actions, even to...