‘My parents bought a house, they got married.’

‘I’m not your dad.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ll never be like him, me ma would kill me.’

‘She would.’ Marjorie cried and laughed a little, her nose ran and she wiped it with her arm.

‘Friends first,’ she said, and she held out her hand and he twisted his little finger around hers.

‘Friends always.’ Then a contraction came and she nearly ripped his little finger off. ‘Holy fuck!’ he shouted.

‘Holy Saint Jesus!’ she cried, and she looked over at Annette. ‘We’re having a baby,’ she said, and Annette nodded.

‘I see that,’ she said, looking at the head crowning Marjorie’s nethers. ‘We’re having it now.’

Davey watched as Marjorie’s eyes bulged in her head and her face reddened and large veins popped in her neck.

‘Push, Marjorie, push,’ Annette said.

If she pushes any more she’ll fucking explode.

‘PUSH.’

‘Holy Saint Jesus,’ Marjorie roared as the baby tunnelled through her and into the world. Annette raised the child up in her large hands, covered in blood and vernix, with a long white-and-purple blood vein attaching it to its mother. It wasn’t pretty, but it was spectacular. She rubbed the baby and the baby cried and Davey didn’t know it then but he was crying too, just like the baby, tears and snot and sobs, real unadulterated sobs.

‘It’s a boy,’ Annette said, and he turned bleary-eyed towards Marjorie, who seemed to be in shock.

‘It’s a boy,’ he said.

‘A boy? We have a boy?’ she said.

‘A boy,’ he repeated, and then they were hugging and he could feel his heart rip but it wasn’t breaking, it was expanding. Annette cleaned down their boy and cut the cord. She wrapped him in one of the blankets that came from the hospital bag and handed him to Davey. ‘Take your son to his mother,’ she said.

He looked at his little face, his tiny button nose, his soft, full cheeks, his rosebud lips, his dark curly hair, and when he opened his dark blue eyes he stared right up at his da and he struggled against the cotton wrap to stretch his arms.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Oh, wow.’

Annette helped Marjorie to sit up. Davey placed the baby in her arms. They both just stared. Marjorie still had the placenta to deliver and was too blissed out or drugged up to pay attention to the small woman tugging on the placenta dangling between her legs.