We were taken to a room with a hospital bed and a crib and a padded bench to sit on. Then the doctor brought Felix out to us, swaddled in a little white blanket. The doctor’s face was filled with regret as he passed our baby back into my arms and I sobbed and held him close.

Somewhere, in a parallel world, a Felix who had survived latched on to my breast and drank my milk till he was satisfied, and slept. And in that world, Mark and I were shaken by the storm that had come so close to taking him, and were grateful to be alive and together.

But we were trapped in a time and place in which Felix was lost.

In this world he was still and cool and the colour had gone from his delicate skin. He was there and it was him, but was no longer quite himself. That little jolly spark had vanished. Not into thin air but into thick air, air that seemed as solid as a wall between me and him. Air that I somehow went on breathing, but he could not.

I knew how sad the doctor and the surgeon and the midwives were. A sorrow like that reaches out like ripples on a pool. It spreads and widens. People struggle with it. Everybody does. New life should be the opposite of death. But sometimes it comes so close as to be interchangeable. The membrane between life and death dissolves, and you feel yourself falling and sinking, and hear the darkness lapping at the margins. And then you know that the world is as fragile as a breath, a pulse. No one is safe, no one, however beloved. Forgetting that may be comforting, but it doesn’t make it untrue.

Mark held Felix too. We said goodbye. And then they took him away. They would take care of him for a little longer, before releasing him to us for good.

When he had gone Mark sobbed in a way I’d never seen any man cry before. Or any woman. As if someone had reached into him and pulled his heart out, and he was completely broken.

I hesitated, but only for a moment. Then I put my arms around him and soothed him and rocked him like a child, and something began to come back to me, very faintly at first and then more strongly: the sense that I still had a use in this world. That I could and would carry on, because Mark was not the only person who needed me.

We decided to tell Ingrid and the girls over the phone. It felt late – it felt like a time after history, when the sun had gone – but it was still early enough for them still to be up. We didn’t want them to hear the car arrive and rush down expecting me to bring Felix in, and then realise my arms were empty.

Mark talked to Ingrid. I tried not to listen to what he said; I felt as if I was intruding. Then I spoke to Ava and Ellie in turn. They were both stunned. At a loss for words.