The child is frowning, uncertain as she scans for her mother, who is now out of her sightline. I expect her to start to cry again, or scream, or kick. But she doesn’t do any of these things. She blinks her eyes several times, so I look more closely at them. They are surrounded by long, red-gold lashes that match my own, though I wear mascara to hide the colour. One eye is four-leaf clover green, again like mine. The other is blue as a dark sky in the top half-circle, and brown as the earth at the bottom. The only other person I have seen with such an eye is Zac. It is one of the most beautiful things about him. Again, though, I wonder if the child’s eye is a symptom of something medical, the same as her white forelock.

I fantasise about picking her up and holding her close, pretending that she is mine.

To others, I must appear to be a normal woman. I alone know that I am a creature stitched out of pieces that don’t fit and never will, with some of them missing and others stretched too thin and in the wrong shape. My seams show vivid and red like those of Frankenstein’s monster.

I say to the child. ‘You are very pretty. What’s your name?’

She opens her mouth, then smacks her lips together.

I laugh. ‘I bet your name is pretty too. Can you tell me how old you are?’

She shakes her head.

‘Let me try to guess. Are you two?’

She holds up one finger.

Her mother speaks over her shoulder to me while Trudy enters more details into the system. ‘Alice will be two next month.’

‘Ah.’ I throw a smile of thanks over my own shoulder. ‘So you are one right now, but nearly two. That is very big. And you’re so clever to count like that.’

She gives me a slow, serious nod of agreement.

‘So you are Alice. I knew you’d have an extra-pretty name. Do you come from Wonderland?’

Alice nods yes to this question and holds out the stuffed kitty, stretching both arms in front of her in one decisive move.

‘For me?’

Another nod.

I take the kitty and jiggle it until she laughs and snatches it back.

‘I love your dress, Alice.’ It is sunburst orange with pink and purple daisies.

Alice points to my head, and I remember that I took the white pom-pom from the Christmas hat Katarina gave me last December and tied it around my ponytail this morning. I touch the ball of fluffy yarn. ‘Do you like it?’

Alice nods, her eyes wide.