The phone rang, making Lily jump. Her boss’s name flashed up on the screen.

“Ed, is everything OK?”

“Yes, fine. Just wanting to check your ETA? Tom and Dana have just arrived and you know they’ll want you to walk them through the strategy, so it’s just small talk until you get here.”

Lily tucked her phone under her chin and crouched among the labeled shoeboxes, searching for the black velvet heels she wanted. “I’ll be leaving in less than a minute. Cab shouldn’t take more than fifteen to get there. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

As the call ended, Lily reached for the right shoebox, in a pile in the far corner of the dressing room. Pulling it free, a second box came tumbling down, and she remembered having failed to put it away properly the last time she had looked inside it two months earlier.

The box fell open at her feet and Lily knew she shouldn’t look, knew she should slip the lid back on before her eyes had grazed something her heart didn’t want to see. She thought about the cab driver outside, already kept waiting longer than she’d promised, instructed herself to close the box, put it back in the corner, walk away.

She knelt down, placed her hands on either side of the lid, heard her own silent order to slide it back in place. But it was as if her eyes were working independently of the rest of her, as if her hands no longer obeyed commands from her brain.

Looking inside, Lily stared at the grainy black-and-white images of a life not yet fully formed, of limbs not yet ready to stretch out into the world, of a future she had so desperately wanted to unfold.

Chapter 7

May 2009

Lily tugs the seat belt across her chest, pulls it a few inches loose at her stomach, then clicks it into the slot. She slips her right hand between her body and the belt. Beyond the muscle, the fat, the skin, and her clothes she wants there to be one last defense.

The flat of her palm rests against her gently convexing stomach. For eighteen weeks she has not dared take it for granted. She has divided her heart into two equal parts: hope and denial. Superstition demands denial for fear that complacency will be punished. But she cannot extinguish the tentative flame of hope: to do so would seem to be a different form of jinxing.

Next to her Daniel starts the car engine. He smiles, pleased that the weekend has been a success and that they have had something to celebrate.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive? I really don’t mind. The doctor said there’s no reason I shouldn’t.”

Daniel shakes his head, strokes her knee. “Absolutely not. I just want you to relax. The weekend doesn’t finish until we get home.”

He eases his foot onto the clutch, slides the gearshift into first, and the car crunches across the gravel forecourt of the hotel, out into the Oxfordshire countryside. He switches on the radio and finds Classic FM. Lily prefers Radio 3 but Einaudi’s “Il Giorni” is playing and she allows herself to sink into familiar music.