Dr Penn washes him and instructs me how to feed him. They leave my baby in a drawer by my bed with a thin pillow lining the base and soft squares of blanket. There is no cradle, of course, because this is not to be his home.

Before he hurries away I hear Dr Penn’s murmur beyond my door, ‘I’ll be round tomorrow – early.’

Mummy does not come home all night.

He lies in the drawer that evening, like the poor babies do. Daddy brings me food and is soft-spoken and kind which makes me cry. He holds me and strokes me. I sit in sheets which were once those of childhood.

When he has gone I don’t sleep as he tells me to. I keep the light on, just a small sidelight, like I’ve always done. I see the little bedclothes twitching up and down. Then he works one arm loose, although I’ve wrapped him well. There is his hand, so small, jerking back and forth. I watch. I can’t stop looking at him. He’s getting ready to cry. Then his voice, a high, sad sound, all alone in there after the warmth of me. I pick him up and put him to one breast then the other, he pulling sharply on me, full of astonishing, separate life. I keep him beside me all night though they told me I wasn’t to. The house is so quiet around us. Sometimes he opens his eyes for a few seconds and looks at me. I know he sees me.

I unwrap him and take in every part of his body, every shadow of his bone and muscle, the delicate, puckered skin. He has a long strong back and a birth mark like a wild strawberry at the bottom of his spine. I feel each bit of him, arms, legs, each rib, ears, cheeks, his soft skull. I hold his head against my cheek. By the morning I know him. I want my life to be his. And they take him away, then, at first light.

* * *

Chapter 25

I was watching out for her. The ambulance arrived on a December day threatening snow, and against the grey clouds it looked very white and clean. Turning into Springfield Road it seemed to be moving in slow motion, stopping outside our door with a final shudder of the engine.

‘She’s here!’ I cried. Aflutter with nerves, I forgot I was alone in the house, calling out only to myself.

A man wearing a blue cap jumped down from the driver’s seat and scuttled round to the back of the vehicle. He opened the door at the back and I saw him reach out a hand.

Olivia was dressed in a black sable coat and black boots. Elizabeth must have seen to that. She was carrying a small overnight bag. I saw immediately that they had already removed the plaster cast from her arm. As she stepped out of the ambulance she hesitated, her face screwing up as if in pain after the darkness inside, even though it was not a bright day. She looked down for a moment, chopped hair falling forward round her cheeks, in a gesture of surrender. It was only once they had stepped inside the gate that she looked up again in bewilderment, taking in our new house, part of a long red-brick terrace, with Russian vine spiralling up the drainpipe, the green front door and wide bay window in which I stood with my hand raised to greet her. She stared at me without responding, as if she could make no sense of who I was. Her face looked so white, so haggard.