BEYOND EXHAUSTION, YET CHARGED WITH wild instinct, Charlotte reached for the bundle in the midwife’s arms. There was no sound of infant crying, as there had been with the births of Sarah and Laura, only a faint snuffling. Mrs Talbot had not announced the baby’s sex, an omission that frightened Charlotte. Instead, she turned to her charge and presented her with the small slick body of a son, amphibian limbs waving feebly – but what was clear, even by candle- and firelight, was that the baby’s head was grotesquely swollen, giving him the appearance of a mushroom. Mrs Talbot did not speak. She laid the damaged infant down with exquisite care, swiftly double-wrapped a cloth around both hands and put them to the child’s mouth and nose. Then she paused and looked to Charlotte, her posture and face a silent query.

A roar burst from Charlotte, stranded on her back like a beetle, blood still pouring from between her thighs. Her arms sawed at the air as she stretched them towards her newborn son.

Mrs Talbot, with the slightest of shrugs, lifted the baby and settled him on Charlotte’s chest, where, after a few anxious moments, he began to root at her breast. At that animal connection, Charlotte’s heart flooded: maybe he would live after all. She peered at the lumpy mass in place of what had been the smooth eggshells of her infant daughters’ skulls. ‘What is wrong with him? Must we not send for a doctor at once?’ she asked.

The midwife said that she had seen such a case before. ‘The doctor said it was a condition known as water on the brain. It cannot be cured, but sometimes a surgeon can drain it.’

‘Is it painful? Will he suffer?’

‘I believe it is not painful, nor an ailment that causes physical suffering. But Mrs Collins, such children do not develop as others do. Your son will always be a child, and delicate. I have been told that conditions such as this make the afflicted susceptible to other illnesses. He is unlikely to live to adulthood. I speak bluntly, but this is preferable to giving false hope.’

Charlotte looked past the puffy mass that swelled above the baby’s ears and brows. These same brows were delicate pencil arches, the ears were tiny pink shells, as were his eyelids, threaded with thin violet lines. His mouth was the perfect definition of a kiss and, as she watched in fascination, it clamped gently around her nipple, comforting them both. She had enjoyed the immediate physical connection all her children had formed with her upon birth, and the sensation of love and protectiveness was not new to her, but this time it churned through her almost violently. She would raise and protect this baby. He would survive.

She spoke firmly. ‘Mrs Talbot, please inform Mr Collins that he has a son.’