My name is called. But the GP wants a second opinion and asks me to return to the waiting room until her colleague is free. There are no chairs now so I stand against the wall. A weeks-old baby wails in pain and my body responds with the swell and rush of milk. I text my husband, who’s 88meant to be back at work by now, instructions on what to feed the baby for lunch. I fish the book from my tote bag again, then hesitate. A moment: what we used to call a goose walking over my grave. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. A second opinion. I was expecting, Oh, it’s just a milk duct, use hot compresses and a comb. I was even prepared for, Let’s aspirate it now, a dab of local anaesthetic and it’ll only take a minute. It’s suddenly not what I want to read about any more, mothers, children, loss. I text my husband again. It’s all fine here, he texts me back, with a row of x’s. Of course it is. He’s a brilliant father. We’re equal partners. But still.

Don’t be silly, I tell myself, and force my hands to stop trembling and open the book.

Her brother tells her to come to his house in Dorset for Easter, with the children, without George. Her husband forbids it. She doesn’t know what to do. She decides to wait until he’s at work, then sneak away. But he makes his move first. She returns home one morning to find the children, and their nanny, gone.

Frantic, she manages to bribe it out of a footman that they’ve been taken to a lodging house in Upper Berkeley Street, ahead of plans to spirit them up north. She rushes to the house and begs the servants there to let her see her children, just for an hour, just for five minutes, just to tell them she loves them. But their master’s instructions are clear and his threats severe, and they refuse. 89

I could hear their little feet running over my head while I sat sobbing below, only the ceiling between us and I not able to get to them!