She’s right. The picture is blurry – perhaps on purpose – with the child’s face turned away, his hair merging with the soft fleecy rug he lies on. Yet it affects me more than anything else has so far. I stare at him, fascinated but also terrified, because I don’t yet recognize him or know if I can be what he needs.

‘My little Spud.’

‘Oh!’ Edwina smiles, and the lines around her eyes fan out like sunrays. ‘Ah, I have news about his name, too.’

‘Tell me?’ I hold my breath, preparing to pretend I don’t care if my kid is called Pluto or Turnip or—

‘Leo. Your son’s given names are Leo Zachary.’

Leo.

I don’t have to pretend I like it. It sounds . . . right. So close to my own name, and to Zoë’s, too.

Did she do it consciously, wanting to give him a lasting connection to us both, however tenuous? I take my share of the responsibility. I treated her badly, tried to railroad her. We are both to blame for the fact that our child was born in distress.

The delays nearly do my head in but today – 3 March – is the day I get to meet my boy.

Edwina is due to meet me outside the children’s centre. They don’t want me to have the foster parents’ address, in case something goes terribly wrong at the hearing. I pace the pavement, the photo of Leo in my hand, the only thing I have of him so far.

‘Joel!’ Edwina scuttles across the street towards me. She has the look of a woman who has seen it all. She gives me a cursory smile. ‘Ready?’

Never. But I try to pretend. ‘Yeah. Been looking forward to this.’ The words seem inadequate and I worry that I’ve already failed.

We climb the tiled steps. The building is a nondescript 1960s block, but to me it’s a fortress. The building is brightly decorated inside, with murals and wall stickers in primary colours. But the hospital-like smell – disinfectant and hot-running radiators – brings back memories of my worst times and, with them, the girl who was always there at my side.

As Edwina heads off to check everyone is ready, I sit on a plastic chair, my hands under my thighs. I want to run. What do I know about my son? Of his first months, or his pain? I have nothing to offer him.

I remember the words Kerry hissed at me the last time we met. You don’t deserve a kid. She’s the person who knows me best in the world. What if she’s right?

No. She doesn’t know the new me, the one who has grown up more in nine weeks than the previous twenty-two years. Kerry did that, held a mirror up so I could see my selfishness and my cowardice.