At my neighbourhood cafe, social order is upheld by the good breeding of its customers. Crass, rude, ignorant oafs are not tolerated here. Customers know to walk outside to answer their mobiles. The discourteous cop withering stares for jumping the coffee queue. We’re the bad manners police: we catch and kill our own.

Last Thursday morning, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked my friendly barista: “Where’s the baby?”

He was puzzled too. A newborn’s cry, high-pitched and grating, filled the cafe. It had the familiar staccato rhythm of all distressed babies: that frenzied pattern of hoarse barks that pains a mother’s ears and lodges in her gut. We both began scanning the tables. I couldn’t see any baby capsules tucked beside chair legs. No anxious mums were tending prams on the footpath. That newborn wailing drowned out the cafe music and stopped conversation. “Where’s it coming from?” called a middle-aged woman sitting by the wall.