There was one moment in the café when I was holding Joni – Aisha had thrust her into my arms unexpectedly – when I looked at the baby’s face and, for a fleeting second, my mind flashed back. The memory began spinning around, faster and faster, until I almost felt dizzy. For a split second I was unsure what I might say or do next. I looked down at Joni, so pure and innocent, and imagined what would happen if I took her. I had an acute sensation that I actually wanted to cause Aisha some pain. Luckily for her, she quickly took Joni back and hurried off to the loos. The spell was broken. For now.

Chapter Thirty

Aisha

Thursday 5^th August

In no time at all I had been a mother for three months. Time seemed to pass in a regulated haze. Everything seemed to need measuring – from keeping track of how many hours’ sleep I got last night, to how much expressed milk to freeze, to how many weeks old and how many pounds Joni had put on. The remembering of digits was endless – and a sure way to make a mother feel hopeless, when you couldn’t always remember them. Most of the time it was hard enough to keep track of which boob I’d last fed her from.

But the last few weeks had been magical because Joni had started smiling properly. Not just the dozy, blissed-out, milk-drunk smiles of the early days, but proper, ‘I know you – and I love you,’ beams. Seeing her blue eyes open and sparkle, and then her whole face light up into a smile, revealing a little dimple on one cheek, when she woke up or saw me enter a room was all the reassurance I needed to know that I was doing a good enough job as her mummy.

It felt as though we were beginning to understand each other. I hadn’t really got what Maggie was going on about in The Baby Group when she described the different cries a baby gave – one for hunger, one for tiredness and another when they were really irritated about something – because all baby cries had sounded the same to me before I had my own, but now I knew. Most of the time I could understand Joni and it made it easier to give her what she needed, when she wanted it. I also knew her favourite breast to feed from and the way she liked to be held. I knew how to rock her to sleep. And I learnt that she loved to play peek-a-boo on the changing mat after bath-time – she found it so amusing when I popped up from behind the towel, breaking into giggles so cute and infectious, I could feel rushes of oxytocin wash through me.

Part of the reason I was having such a blissful time with our baby was because things with Jason had also improved. It felt as if we had overcome the issues with him not being ready for all this and he was now fully engaged with Joni. Jason and I felt more in tune with each other than we had in months – it reminded me of the heady, loved-up days we had in Hong Kong. Whereas I used to sometimes dread him getting home from work because his mood-swings made me feel anxious, now I couldn’t wait to hear his key turn in the lock. He would arrive sporting surprise bunches of tulips, or my favourite chocolates for ‘no reason’; he’d sometimes send me a romantic message or cheesy poem on WhatsApp during the day and tell me how he couldn’t wait to get home and kiss me all over. It was so lovely. I felt truly loved.