That night, I woke to the sound of Joni crying. It was a loud, urgent kind of cry. Her forehead felt hot and clammy. I lifted her out of her cot which was now in the nursery and brought her into bed with me. I looked at my phone: it was only 1 a.m., she shouldn’t be hungry. She looked so small on the side of the bed where Jason should have been sleeping. She also looked under the weather. Her cry turned into a whimper, as though she couldn’t muster enough energy to keep it up. She was waving her arms around though, as if trying to tell me something. She seemed to be in discomfort and her nose was runny. Was she okay? I felt panicky and alone. Without Jason here, there was nobody to confer with. I thought about who else might be awake and sober at this time of night – the other women in The Baby Group, of course. My finger hovered over the icon for the group – a picture of a baby bottle, which Lucy had uploaded when she set it up. Little did she know then the battle she’d have with baby bottles as she tried to get Albie to take one. I felt nostalgic for a moment, despite the fact she had duped me. I wondered if any aspects of our ‘friendship’ had been based on truth.

I decided not to send a message to the group. Instead I scooped Joni up and padded into the kitchen to give her some Calpol for her temperature – it was probably nothing more than a summer cold. The weather had turned unseasonably chilly in the last couple of days. I also gave her half a bottle of milk to wash it down. She drank it hungrily, so I gave her some more; perhaps she was a having a growth spurt.

I reflected on the camaraderie our Baby Group had shared and wondered whether I would see any of them again. Now this had happened, I couldn’t imagine ever meeting up with Lucy in a café for a catch-up.

I decided to let Joni spend the rest of the night in bed with me. Co-sleeping might not be Gina Ford’s style, but tonight it felt as though we needed to be extra close to one another.

Once the paracetamol took effect, she was soon asleep again, her arms up by her head in submission, her legs splayed like a little frog. She made sweet snorting noises that melted my heart. In the last week or so she had begun to look more like Jason. My heart ached for him to be here with us.

I looked across at Joni again. Despite her presence, sometimes I felt so desperately alone, it was suffocating.

Monday 16^th August

I must have eventually fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, I was woken by Joni stirring at 6 a.m. I was feeling tired and jittery in anticipation of seeing Jason again. I busied myself on a mission to clean the flat. Joni seemed grumpy, clearly the broken night of sleep had been tough on both of us. At one point, when I found myself spraying the bathroom mirror with deodorant instead of glass cleaner, I realized that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea and I needed to slow down. So when it was time for Joni to have her late morning nap, I decided to take the opportunity for a rest too, putting my phone on silent but setting the alarm for 1.30 p.m. so we would be ready for his arrival. I put Joni down in the nursery so I could sleep more easily in the bedroom, without fear of disturbing her.