July. The UK prepares for the US presidential visit. On the morning of 13 July, I watch over livestream as protestors launch the huge inflatable baby, with its snarling lopsided mouth and piss-in-the-snow-hole eyes, to float above the 96Palace of Westminster. My son and I have made our placards, sellotaping pieces of A4 card to sticks of bamboo, and we intend to join the protest march. But at the last minute, the stupefying heat of the day, the thought of the sweltering tube, my husband delayed on the other side of the city, we – I – chicken out. My son is relieved: worried that the man who steals children will try to take him. I will do this, he says, and bares his teeth in a chimp-like snarl. I will do that, and the bad man will run away. Then he buries himself in my side. I want to stay with you for all the days and all the nights.

Yes, I say. Yes.

Later, I look at the best placards on Twitter. Mary Poppins, carrying her iconic umbrella, beside a slogan in rainbow colours: SUPER CALLOUS FRAGILE RACIST SEXIST NAZI POTUS. We will overcomb the hate. Orange is the New Nazi. I’m missing Wimbledon for this, you Tangerine WANKMAGGOT. Ours simply said BREASTFEEDING BABIES BELONG WITH THEIR MAMAS, and even more simply NO KIDS IN CAGES.

Caroline to Lord Melbourne: I wish I had never had children – pain and agony for the first moments of their life – dread and anxiety for their uncertain future – and now all to be a blank.

In the evenings, after he’s gone to bed, I arrange my son’s collection of dinosaurs to look like they’re building a tower with his sister’s bricks, racing his double-decker bus and her push-along trolley. I think of The Fairies who lived in my doll’s house and occasionally left letters, tiny writing in cards 97no bigger than postage stamps, and packets of Parma violets. But my sisters and I were older then: he will barely remember any of this. Do you remember before your sister was born? I ask him, and he thinks about it and says, No! He thinks some more and says, I hurt my knee in Croatia, which is true, he did, a bad graze falling off a low wall, and the shock of the blood made him howl for an hour.