For a few seconds she sat motionless, her cheeks very white. Her eyes moved across my face, as if searching me for solidity. But her gaze was so strange.

The nurse walked across to us with apparent reluctance. She spoke calmly, with sympathy. ‘I’d better take her back.’

Olivia sagged, exhausted. I wanted to make promises to her, but could think of none I could offer honestly. Instead I kissed her as she stood passively in my arms.

As she left me, I said, ‘I’ll do something Livy . . .’ She didn’t look back as she was led away.

Outside I took deep breaths of the cooling air, leaning against the wall trying to control my rising nausea. I failed, and vomited wretchedly into a tangle of shrubbery at one end of the building.

I knew Douglas would be timing my journey back from Arden that day and, in spite of himself, adding each moment of what he considered my lateness to his catalogue of my wrongs. But I felt defiantly that his needs in this case were less important. I had to talk to someone. I also needed one of Lisa’s cups of sweet tea. I got off the bus early and walked through to Stanley Street.

The light was going and in the narrow entry it seemed darker. I found the court unusually quiet. The children must have been inside eating. I could hear the sound of a wireless through an open window and cutlery clattering and voices.

‘Surprise surprise,’ Lisa said, opening the door to me. She was more relaxed now Don was home. She turned to him. ‘Look who’s come to pay us a call.’

Don nodded at me as I peeled my coat off, raising his round, freckled face for a second from the job he was absorbed in at the table. He was dismantling the clock which had long sat silently on the mantelshelf. He was a quiet man with an easy manner and I never felt awkward in his presence.

‘We’ve just finished tea,’ Lisa said. She was in her apron still and the old slippers which by a miracle were still surviving. ‘Here – ’ she pulled a chair out from the table, ‘sit yourself down.’ She chased the boys outside but allowed Daisy to stay. I gave her a peppermint. ‘You look terrible,’ Lisa remarked, pouring tea.

‘I’m pregnant.’

Lisa stopped half way to the table with Don’s teacup. ‘You’re not! ’Ere – d’you ’ear that, Don?’

‘Course I ’eard – not deaf am I? Congratulations,’ he said, giving me a shy smile.

‘’Appy about it, are you?’ Lisa asked, sitting down wearily. She saw my face. ‘Course you are. Lovely.’ She looked across at her husband. ‘Shall we tell ’er, Don?’

He gave her a mischievous grin across the table. ‘Tell ’er what?’

Lisa tutted. ‘Tek no notice of ’im, Kate. I’m expecting as well.’

We both laughed and exclaimed and compared dates. Lisa’s baby was due a couple of weeks earlier than mine.