She had turned off her computer; instead she took to her bath with candles and a light-hearted book, pre-approved by a lovely lady in her local bookshop. She felt great anxiety and did all she could to battle it because she knew it was bad for the baby. She went to yoga twice a week, she meditated, she banished all negativity . . . well, not all, she still saw her mother. It wasn’t easy. Davey was kind and loving, and she needed to be calm.

Just relax, Marj, one day at a time, dead Rabbit said all the time.

Easy for you to say, Baldy. I’m trying my best, but as Gwen Stefani puts it, this shit is bananas.

Juliet was doing her best to help Marjorie calm down and use her breath. She was very good with the breath – she’d helped her own mother breathe through pain a lot.

‘Slow and steady, in and out, unclench, unclench, unclench . . .’ Juliet said, screeching slightly towards the end of the sentence. Marjorie realised she was squeezing the child’s hands to mush.

‘So sorry,’ she said, letting go.

‘That’s fine, now breathe in and out.’ Juliet flexed her fingers.

‘I am.’

‘No, you’re just inhaling, you’re not exhaling. You keep inhaling, you’ll end up having a panic attack or faint or something.’

‘Oh God,’ she said, and she inhaled a little more.

‘Exhale, exhale – out, get it out, breathe it out.’

Marjorie tried hard to exhale; it was as though she’d forgotten how. She was sitting at the edge of the bed with her hands now resting on Juliet’s shoulders.

‘Think of your favourite things,’ Juliet said, trying something new to distract or divert Marjorie from having a full-on panic attack.

‘What?’ Marjorie was steadying herself. The pain had passed and Juliet was using her stopwatch to count down to the next attack.

‘When Ma was really bad and we were waiting for her drugs to kick in, we’d talk about her favourite things, places and people. We talked about you a lot,’ Juliet said, and Marjorie smiled.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK, one of my favourite things is a vintage handbag I bought in a market in Paris when was I was twenty-one,’ she said, and suddenly she was in the throes of agony once more. It felt like the kid inside had a Swiss army knife and was hacking its way out. ‘Oh God, kill me.’

‘Focus on the breath, focus on the good. Give me a place.’

‘Easy,’ Marjorie said, and then she squeezed her eyes shut and stuck her fingers deep into Juliet’s shoulders. ‘Oh holy Saint Jesus.’

‘A place?’ Juliet suggested, before screaming for Marjorie to let go. She did so and stared into Juliet’s face.