I love Laurel. It’s something I find hard to admit, even to myself. I’ve been in a situation before where I let myself become attached – and look how that ended, I chide myself. I swore that this time, it would merely be a temporary stopgap until I could find something else, a different job where I could simply turn up from nine to five and then go home and not think about it again till the morning. But I got lured in by Laurel and her familiar baby smell, right at the beginning. It is second nature to me to comfort her as she runs to me, not Fran, when she falls and hurts herself. She fell a few weeks ago, as she ran in from the garden, the paving slabs wet and slippery underfoot. Fran and I had been stood in the kitchen, both of us hearing the thud as she went down and then her thin piercing shriek. We’d rushed outside together, Fran pushing past me to get to her first, her arms outstretched ready to pick her up, but Laurel had shrieked louder and shaken her head, reaching her arms out to me, for me to scoop her up and carry her inside. Fran had shrugged it off, but I’d seen the look of fury on her face when I had lifted Laurel up, her head fitting naturally into the hollow of my shoulder as if she were my own.

Spending all that time caring for her, making sure she is happy, looked after, it was inevitable that I would get attached in the end. And now, it’s happening again, just as it did before. I take my eye off the ball for a few seconds and everything comes tumbling down.

*

Fran is lurking outside the bathroom when I slide the lock back and pull the door open, making me jump, and I almost drop the bundle of dirty laundry I am carrying. I can only hope that the thunder of the water drowned out the sound of my sobbing, although the redness around my eyes will still give it away.

‘I’m going to try and get some rest,’ she tells me, her face closed. I don’t blame her. I don’t think she slept at all last night and her face is pinched with exhaustion. Plus, she is clearly still annoyed with me for what I said – it’s probably best for both of us to be in separate rooms for a while. ‘Get Dominic to wake me up if . . . anything happens.’ She glances down towards the bundle in my arms. ‘What is that?’