Lily returns and helps me to my feet. She supports me like an old lady as I stumble into the house. After pressing me into a kitchen chair, she pours me a glass of water. I try to raise it to my lips, but my hands are shaking. Without speaking, Lily holds the glass for me and I drink.

“You look like complete shit,” she states, grabbing a banana out of the fruit bowl and peeling it.

She breaks off a chunk and holds it in front of my mouth with a stern expression as if she’s trying to feed a fussy toddler. I open, chew and swallow, without tasting a thing.

Lily pulls out her phone. “I’m calling in reinforcements.”

*

The rest of the day is colourless. People come and go, giving me strange looks I don’t understand. My friends, the midwife, Will. When Elliot arrives and I watch the father of my child holding his baby for the first time, it brings nothing but calm resignation. When he leaves without the baby in his arms, I experience a fleeting moment of relief, nothing more. I have no idea what he said to me, or what I said back. I have no idea what anyone is saying to me. I’m on an island and no one can reach me. Not even my own daughter. One minute she’s latched on to me, the next she’s gone. Either way, nothing inside me alters.

Then I’m being led to a car and somehow I’m back in hospital again. A nurse puts a pill into my hand, tells me to swallow. I do as she says, lie on my back and stare up at nothing. Finally, I sleep.

*

I wake in agony. My breasts are rock-hard and painfully full of milk. In a panic, I sit up and find Rose asleep in a cot beside me.

“I gave her some of mine,” murmurs Emma. “I hope that’s OK.”

She’s curled up under a blanket on the puffy chair beside the window. It’s dark outside.

“Some what?” I ask.

Emma studies me for a few seconds. “Milk,” she says finally. “I gave her some of my milk. They tried her on a bottle, but she wasn’t having a bar of it.”

I blink a few times, trying to understand. “You breastfed my baby?” I say uncertainly.

“Yes.”

I stare at Emma, wondering how to make sense of what she said, where I am.

“Why?” I say at last. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

Emma sits forwards and now her face is no longer in shadow, I can see the tears dribbling down her cheeks.

“The doctor’s recommended you sleep as long as possible. They said…” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “They said you were too fragile to be woken.”

I frown. “Em, that’s ridiculous. What am I even doing here?”