A flush spread across Douglas’s face, and I watched his expression break into a bashful kind of wonder. I realized he had scarcely thought himself capable of producing a child.

‘Oh, my love.’ He sounded awed. His scarred cheek twitched slightly as it did when he felt strong emotion. He held me close. Then he turned brisk, deciding to take charge. ‘We must take very, very good care of you. You must give up your job straight away, of course.’

‘Nonsense.’ I went to the basin and splashed water over my face. ‘I’ve got heaps to do and I can’t just give it up now. Exercise in pregnancy is supposed to be good for you. Don’t fuss, Douglas.’

But he did fuss. Fuss would be a gentle word for it. That Sunday I was due to visit Olivia. The hospital had agreed to me visiting on my own, and I was anxious to go as often as possible without Elizabeth. We were settling into a pattern of seeing her once a fortnight, on alternate weeks. Elizabeth was occasionally accompanied by Alec. Douglas already resented this. Now it became a symbol, an issue on which to focus his lack of trust and his need to control me in order to feel safe.

‘You’re not to go,’ he ordered on the Saturday afternoon. I was sitting with my feet up looking through a box of books. I realized, as I looked at the old, forgotten titles, that Angus had given me several of them.

‘Douglas,’ I said quietly. ‘Please don’t start giving me orders. I’m going to Arden tomorrow. I’m sorry it means not being with you all day, but you did say you had work to do, and I simply have to go.’

‘But you need to rest, not keep gallivanting about all over the place. Don’t you care about our child?’

‘Oh don’t be so ridiculous,’ I flared at him. I was really needled by him lecturing me on a subject about which I knew far more than he did. ‘I’ve been out shopping all morning carrying heavy baskets of food for your dinner, which is far more exhausting than sitting on a train to Leamington. But it doesn’t even cross your mind to stop me doing that, does it?’ I stood up, still holding one of the books, intending to leave the room, but Douglas seized my arm, gripping me tightly.

‘Don’t raise your voice at me,’ he said in an aggressive voice. ‘I’ve provided you with a child. What more do you want?’

I looked up at him coldly. ‘Let go of me.’

Douglas loosed my arm and I stood before him, turning the book over in my hands. The soft, leather cover of Angus’s gift to me made me feel choked with bitterness. What did I want? To be with someone who I didn’t have to tread round so carefully, who didn’t want to keep me in a box with a few holes punched in the lid. Someone who could love me properly and let me be.