I was seized with the urgency I always felt when you were sleeping or taken off my hands. I already had all the clothes heaped on the kitchen floor, napkins soaking in a pail. I spent some time sorting them, dividing whites from coloureds while the wide sink filled slowly. When I’d finished with the clothes, it still wasn’t ready and I sprinkled Hudson’s into the water, impatiently turning on the tap as far as it would go. The water had slowed to a trickle and I tutted in exasperation, staring at the dull metal of the tap, willing it to force out more water. Before the sink was even full I pushed in a bundle of clothes and began pummelling at it, trying to wet everything in the inadequate depth of water. Suddenly the water came on again with a rush. I frowned, turning the tap down again. Bubbles rose softly round my wrists.

A few moments later I remembered our nightclothes and ran upstairs for my nightdress and Douglas’s pyjamas. On my way down, I paused at the top of the stairs. It was very quiet up there, except for a sound, a tiny sound I couldn’t place but which alerted me. Puzzled, I looked into Olivia’s room. I thought perhaps she might be lying on the bed, trying to settle you down beside her.

She was standing with her back to me, the blue frock vivid in front of our dark furniture. My mind struggled – for such a long, slow time it seemed – to make sense of this. The chest of drawers in front of her had been cleared, the toilet mirror now standing at a queer angle on the bed, along with her perfume, powder, lotions. I could see each end of the enamel baby bath, its bright, bluish white; Olivia’s elbows looking creamy against it. Her arms were held straight, taut. And there was silence. Then a movement of water. A tiny splash in the quiet. It was this sound, its restrained smallness which I had registered as odd and which now sliced across my mind.

You were never silent in the bath: you gurgled or screamed.

I was there in a second, my body tight and violent. Half turning, Olivia glared at me with a hard, determined expression. One of her hands was spread over your face, pushing you under the water, the other holding your body down. She had filled the bath deep. Your arms and legs were moving madly, but barely managing to agitate the water’s surface.

I grabbed Olivia by the neck and flung her across the room with all my strength. She fell and hit her head on the bedside cabinet, and I was pulling my baby up into my arms, completely possessed by panic, water saturating the front of my dress. I held you upside down, banging on your back, and a small gush of water came from your nose and mouth, then your choking, anguished cries reaching higher and higher. As I held you you thrust your head back, so beside yourself that there were seconds of silence between each cry, your spine bowing, rigid. I snatched up the little sheet and wrapped you in it and held you close to me, hearing distressed, animal sounds of comfort coming from me as I rocked you.