‘So sadly, no horror story from me about ripped fannies or—’

‘Emma, shut up.’

She laughs again and returns to the sofa. ‘Dude. Your face, that’s the first time I’ve laughed in days.’ She kisses Yvonne on the head. ‘Thanks for coming over. I wasn’t sure if you would.’

Yvonne looks down, back to the baby, a slight whistle from his nose with each breath. She’s overcome by a need to apologise for the argument, for everything she implied that day, for calling the baby a mistake. He’s anything but.

‘Kiama came the day after we met up. Weird, right?’

‘Maybe it was all that reduced Christmas chocolate.’ Yvonne strokes his head gently. ‘The name actually suits him.’

The kettle clicks off and Kiama wriggles and stretches out his tiny arms.

‘Here we go,’ Emma says. But instead of taking him, she gets up. ‘Do you want peppermint or chamomile?’

He’s fussing now, emitting little cracks of sounds, a cough and cry at the same time. Yvonne bobs him up and down, humming till he stops and opens his eyes, which are a dark turquoise. ‘His eyes are a strange colour, aren’t they? Bit like yours? Greenish? Or are they blue?’

Emma comes back to the sofa with two mugs and a bottle under her arm. ‘Here, do you want to give him this? Don’t judge me, I tried the breastfeeding thing and my nipples bled for days. I take back everything I ever said about Nestlé.’

He takes the bottle easily, opening his eyes fully to stare up at Yvonne. ‘Oh, he’s lovely,’ she says, shocking herself by sounding like her mum. Is this what Claude meant? That even though you claim to not like babies along comes one particular baby who’s so cute it kicks your clock into ticking. ‘Look at his little hands and the fingers,’ she says splaying them. ‘How do you even cut these nails? And he’s got such a wrinkly forehead,’ she laughs. ‘But these eyes, intense. Does Geoff have blue eyes?’

‘Does it matter?’ Emma snaps. She looks away then busies herself moving around the gift bags on the floor.

Maybe Yvonne shouldn’t have come today. Perhaps Emma’s not ready for visitors.

‘He got a lot of presents then,’ Yvonne says, keen to keep talking.

‘Yeah, even Box Room Bethany and her boring fiancé sent something.’