(She does not look ahead, she says, does not want to know how her life will move, cannot conceive of actually planning it. More flexible, obviously, than Elliott, seeing him and deliberately taking an opposite route, surely more likeable, more approachable. Determined, with the same determination as her brother, but their ends are different and so she doesn’t see it. After lunch we do the dishes, and I am remembering again and she lets me be. She says she has brought a book that she wants to finish, and I go back into my garden, where everything is the same and full of changes.)

Everything was quite different with Katie.

When Elliott was almost two years old, Stephen and I decided it was time to have another child. Everyone then said it was unhealthy to be, or have, an only child and the experts we (or I) read so assiduously recommended that children be spaced apart by two or three years.

There were no romantic dreams this time; I had a child, another would come, and meanwhile I cared for Elliott and carried Katie as obliviously as a kangaroo with its young in a pouch. I think that at the time both Stephen and I wanted this second child for Elliott more than for ourselves. Not that we didn’t want a second; but we did think of it as a companion for Elliott, a sort of second-string team.

Somewhere in my memory was the pain of Elliott’s birth; I could not summon up the reality of it, but I remembered the thoughts, the blinding hysteria, and I did not want to think of going through it again. I sighed; it seemed inevitable and cruel.

But it wasn’t that way at all; Katie came easily, swiftly, and there was pain but it didn’t go on forever the way Elliott’s had, it was over soon and easily forgotten, and I was smug with satisfaction.

She looked as Elliott had, like a baby, no resemblance to anyone. I fell in love with her as soon as I saw her, was grateful that we had decided, for whatever reason, to have another child. But the wonder I’d felt seeing Elliott for the first time was not there; she was a baby, beautiful, and she was mine and Stephen’s and we had created her, but it seemed natural now. Elliott had been a miracle; Katie was a child.

We named her after my grandmother, Kathleen, but we never called her that. Most often she was Katie, sometimes Kate, without any particular reason for the difference.

She smiled easily, laughed early, went without hesitation to new people, and I watched her and was proud. I felt none of the compulsive protectiveness I had with Elliott; I was pleased that people were attracted to her, that they wanted to touch her and hold her, and that Stephen was enchanted by her and would help take care of her; time was short for me now, there were two babies, and I appreciated whatever he could do.