After she had rung off I sat down on the low wall of the car park. The morning was grey under a monochrome sky, with none of the luminous quality of the evening before. Cars rolled through the entrance and circled past me, looking for slots. A young man in a Peugeot skidded into an empty place and leaped out, clicking the remote locking as he sprinted towards the hospital doors. His wife must be in labour, I thought. I watched an old couple extricate themselves with difficulty from their Honda. The wife took a pair of sticks from behind the passenger seat and gave them to her husband, waiting with exaggerated patience while he shuffled himself into the ‘go’ position. They set off on the journey towards the doors together, without having exchanged a word. A big Asian family filed past, followed by a white girl who looked younger than Lola pushing a baby in a buggy. All these people had their different reasons for coming here, to this place of crisis, and all of them brought with them the weight of their anxiety or the bubble of hope. Ted was dying, but so were other people behind the stained concrete façade, and at the same time others were struggling with pain or dreaming of recovery, and babies were fighting their way out into the light. Being part of this random community made me feel less isolated and the walls that contained my feelings seemed to grow thinner, as if they might rupture and I might be able to give way to grief.

A florist’s van drew up and the driver began unloading cellophane-wrapped bunches of flowers finished with puffs of gaudy ribbon. The last item to appear was a wicker basket with a huge hoop handle and a ruff of paper enclosing a mass of pink and white carnations. The sight made me smile and remember the day Lola was born. She was handed to me wrapped in a blanket, and I looked down into her fathomless black eyes and felt a stirring of love I had never known before.

Ted was living at that time with an auntie called Elaine. It was Elaine who sent flowers and a card (‘It’s a Beautiful Baby Girl!’) signed in both their names, with a line that read, ‘Your Dad’s up to his eyes, nothing new!’

When the driver came back from delivering the flowers he leaned against the back doors of the van and lit a cigarette. He saw me watching him and called out, ‘Just taking five, eh?’

‘Why not?’ I called back meaninglessly.