But I worried about her anyway. It was a dull, constant worry, like a niggling toothache that might yet explode into a crisis.

I was so lucky, so blessed. My mum would have been so happy if she could have known that she was a grandmother of three.

So why didn’t I feel it?

Back in London it was raining – not heavily, just a persistent drizzle falling from a sunless grey sky. It was like leaving one dream for another, in which everything was familiar but too faint and faded to be real.

Mark put us in a taxi; he was going to travel separately to his house in Oxfordshire. I said to him, ‘I wish we were going with you,’ and he said, ‘It won’t be for long, Jenny. I’ll call you tonight,’ and closed the taxi door and waved us off.

We hadn’t got far before Ava fell asleep. She was sitting next to me, and Ellie was facing us because she was the one who didn’t mind travelling backwards. She could read in cars quite happily too, and had Wuthering Heights open on her knees.

As the traffic stopped and started Ava’s head sagged and her shoulders slumped until she was leaning on me with her head nestled on my shoulder. She was warm and soft and heavy – a little too heavy, given that she was as tall as I was now, but I was very happy to be slightly squashed by her. It was so rare to be this close to her for any length of time. She smelled of Ava, sweet but not too sweet, the way she always had.

It was humbling to think that she’d once been as tiny as the baby I was carrying now. I was filled with a sudden rush of pity for Mark for having missed all the stages that had passed in between, for not having known Ava the toddler or the little girl or the younger adolescent who had smiled in such a way as to hide the braces on her teeth.

Pity… and guilt.

That whole childhood, all those years of scraped knees and friendship problems and crazes and times-tables, all the things she’d loved – snowdays, Easter eggs, ice pops stored in the freezer compartment for summer, sparklers on Bonfire Night. He’d missed it all.

I had been so sure that Mark had meant what he said when he told me he’d got back together with Paula, and I shouldn’t contact him again. I had believed that he didn’t want to know. That there was no point telling him about the baby, and it was down to me to decide what to do next.

But how could anyone ever be sure how anyone would react to anything? I hadn’t persisted. I hadn’t given him the chance. I’d fallen into Sean’s arms because he was there and it was easy… and it had been comforting, and flattering. And also, if I was really honest, because all the pregnancy hormones had driven me wild with lust, and I’d always secretly thought Sean was quite attractive and all of a sudden I’d found him irresistible. Besides, I hadn’t been able to come up with any particularly convincing reasons why I should resist him. What did I have to lose? Or so I thought at the time.