‘But we have to let the doctor in,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ Audette said, stopping at my bed long enough to cup her hand on my forehead. Her cheeks were flushed, excited. She disappeared out of the door to some other task.

‘It’s so hot,’ I whined. ‘Can we not open one window?’

Madame in my room and Audette, down the hall, answered no, in unison.

‘It may be the stuff of the old sages-femmes,’ said Madame, laying a stack of clean linen on the chest of drawers, ‘but better to be safe.’

‘Safe from what?’

‘Witches. Devils. Peoples of the water. If they come at all, they’ll come for your child at the moment of birth.’

‘For heaven’s sake.’

‘All the clean rags you can find, Audette,’ Madame called through my bedroom door. ‘And start the water boiling.’

By the time the doctor arrived, I was on all fours over the seat of a chair, my stomach hanging low and my nightdress damp and slick against my body. The doctor compelled me to lie on my back, on a nest of old sheets Audette had prepared for me on the floor. Being on my back felt unnatural, and though he was the doctor, I wanted to tell him he was wrong. He muttered something about stale air and left the room, and then there was some sort of conflict on the other side of my bedroom door, in which I had little interest, until he came back in and flung open the window, letting the outside air blow gently over my skin. For this I was grateful, and willing to take my chances with these peoples of the water.

Each time I tried to return to my earlier position, on my knees, the doctor reprimanded me. Lying down, all the weight of you settled into my spine. After hours of this, I lost much of my will and had only the energy to do what I was told. I was offered a mask to wear, which, ignorant of its purpose, I accepted, and allowed it to be placed over my nose and mouth. The doctor administered a liquid by dripping it from a glass pipette into a wad of cotton folded into the mask, which I then inhaled. The liquid smelled sweet but made me feel as if my head were going to detach from my body and float out of the window. I pulled the mask from my face and vomited on to the floor, and no one asked me to wear it again.

More hours passed and I was permitted to walk around the apartment, to ease your progress. Audette kept the fires raging and Madame stayed as close to me as a shadow. I wanted this to end and it felt like it never would. I was imprisoned and I was possessed by pain. Each surge was like. Each one was like. All the bones of the lower back and pelvis and thighs contracting in size and density to that of a bullet. Not once though, not once did I wish you dead. And in these agonizing hours, and after all the years of having believed what Tante Huguette had told me, in these hours I learned that my own mother would never have wanted me to die.