‘Would you like to hold her for a moment, before she has to go?’ I asked.

She held you with awe, partly afraid, I could tell, gazing into your tiny, squashed face, her dark eyes wide and tender. She looked across at me and smiled. ‘She’s wonderful, Kate. She’s a miracle. Does she have a name yet?’

‘Anna.’

‘Just Anna?’

‘One name’s enough, I think.’

‘Of course it is. Little Anna.’ She raised you so gently and kissed your forehead before handing you to the nurse. You let out a roar and Olivia looked taken aback and then laughed. ‘Be happy,’ she said. ‘Little Anna.’

Later the nurse said to me, ‘She’s a lovely-looking girl, that friend of yours. I thought I recognized her – or was it just my imagination?’

If only Douglas could have seemed so lovely. He disliked seeing signs of human frailty and was very ill at ease in the hospital. I had hoped for him to be loving and awestruck, reaching out to his child. Instead, he was deeply uncomfortable in this public place of the ward, unable to expose any softer feelings he may have had.

His progress along the wooden floor to my bed was rather like walking across a stage. I was so used to the sight of him that I barely thought of it, but I knew he sensed the eyes of the other women on his contorted leg, the terrible graceless walk.

He said, ‘Hello,’ leaning over to give me a busines-like peck on the cheek, for which for a second I hated him.

‘Did they tell you we have a little girl?’

‘Yes.’ He sat down on the chair by the bed. ‘They told me. Are you all right, Katie?’

The question came awkwardly. I suppose the act of giving birth was so foreign to him, so personal.

‘I feel better than I expected.’ There was a silence. ‘I thought we’d call her Anna.’

Douglas nodded. ‘Whatever you like. Is she . . . she’s healthy and all that?’

He was afraid, of course, that you’d be like him: not whole. That he would have marred you in some way.

‘She’s beautiful.’ I reached out to take his hand, which rested stiffly in mine. ‘Don’t worry. She’s a lovely baby. I’ll ask them to bring her, shall I? She’ll need feeding soon.’

He was so awkward with you, Anna, right from the beginning. He watched your little form approaching in the nurse’s arms with a solemn face.

‘I’ll give her a little bit of a feed,’ I said. ‘Then she’ll be happy when you hold her.’

The moment I started to feed you he was on his feet. ‘Look – I’ll go and have a cigarette outside. I’ll come back when you’ve finished.’ And he was off again along the ward as if he couldn’t get out fast enough.

When he did come back and hold you, there was no engagement in it. He held you in the stiff way I have seen some other fathers put on with infants, not wanting to expose their tenderness, not knowing how. He rocked you too hard and made you cry. He never looked into your face deeply the way a mother would. To him you were my realm, something abstract, ‘a child’ for which he was in some way responsible.