I smelled his morning’s coffee. Stale.

‘And then she ’ees shouting –’ Michal threw his thin arms to the air – ‘she ’ees now all the time shouting at Michal … Michal, I need help. Stay home, Michal, what if baby comes and I here alone and you in that big Hospital with people, giving them tea … what about me, Michal, and your baby? Make tea for me, Michal Piwaski …’

Jane Lohan began screeching as she pulled a cannula from her thin wrist. Blood sprayed upwards and forwards like my son’s urine when he stood up for the first time in the garden and peed. Proudly. Michal abandoned me as I tried with some difficulty to pull a T-shirt over my head.

‘What you gone and done, now, now, good Janey? Ah, all she wants is perhaps make baby come, quicker, quicker … always wanting baby to come quicker,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I mean what is the rush? Hmmm? Why would we rush baby? But Karolina is well, thank you, mind you very fat and swollen on the ankles.’

I licked up to Michal because Margaret Rose told me his cheap coffee worked to open the bowels and give you an energy surge. He also had an uncanny way with doctors, making them divulge things, as he was neither apologetic nor shy and he didn’t read social cues very well, which gave him accidental power.

Welcome to the Ward. Named after a saint. Female. French. Five of us. And Claire.

Hysterical after Magpie, the next morning, I had driven into town, skidded on the pavement outside my office and left a wing mirror around a Children Crossing sign. I ran in and out, breathless. The offices were barely recognisable. I don’t know if I met anyone. I think back and imagine that surely I must have passed out the receptionist, Martha, or the guy who does all the design and layout, and I don’t know did I look in the frosted glass at my accountant, Liam, but I don’t remember it, except that the walls seemed to hang down over the desks, or the ceiling had fallen in some feet. I filled my arm cradle with a map of Bulgaria, brown envelopes, an opened sheaf of A4 paper, two dried-up yellow highlighter pens, three pearl dark green tampons, a box of fruity tea, a protein bar (salted caramel), a ream of paper and a wasted tube of Clarins’ handcream. In over ten years I’d never left the offices for longer than a hiatus to look at high-risk properties abroad and the obligatory annual ten-day all-inclusive, where my anxiety would reach peak Fucked Up.

Later that week, I let everyone know I was stepping aside for a while. Weekly updates, but I was to be left alone. Alex was thrilled. Finally. A break. Time out. Mindfulness. Me time. And we had some bubbly to celebrate that I threw down the loo. I didn’t know how to tell him.