‘At your age, not a chance,’ she said, and Marjorie felt like crying. ‘But no matter what, we’ll all be there for you, you’ll be taken good care of and it will be worth it. Believe me on that.’

Marjorie nodded her head and burst into tears. ‘OK, Molly. I will.’

‘Who loves ya, Marjorie?’

‘Molly does.’

‘That’s right,’ she said, and she kissed her on the forehead.

Marjorie didn’t discuss her fears around pain and labour again, and although they didn’t go away, she comforted herself with the thought that no matter what, it would be worth it. Then as the due date fast approached, her fears grew. What if the baby dies? It could die. Babies die all the time. Then the nightmares came; every time she closed her eyes a baby died. She woke up screaming and Davey ran into the room. ‘Is it now? Are we a go?’ He held up two pre-packed hospital bags for mother and baby. She cried and told him she had dreamed the baby died; he sat on the bed and held her close. Despite all her fears, the baby was doing well, she was being monitored closely, everything was as it should be but still that fear crawled inside her and spread out. What if the baby died? She wasn’t sure she could live. That would be the final straw. I barely survived you, Rabbit; I definitely won’t survive that.

She had found herself worrying more about things that were mostly out of her control: climate change, famine and earthquakes; for the first time in her life living on a small island really preyed on her mind. ‘One tsunami and Ireland’s gone. That’s all it would take.’ She cried all the time: at cute dogs, homeless dogs and dead dogs. She couldn’t watch anything with human pain and suffering, especially children – the news was out, dramas were out, even some comedies made her cry. She deleted her social media. ‘There’s so much sadness.’ One more ‘my granny/son/mother/daughter/father died’ post and she’d have lost it. One more ‘save this animal from horrible torture in a remote village in God knows where by simply sharing a post’ request or signing a petition for a woman who’d been gang-raped and now faced a lashing for being indecent, one more terrible war story or photo of the face of a hopeless child. She cried for all of them; they took up residence in her head and broke her heart.