Though bone weary, Ada slightly revived after deeply inhaling the soft, warm, evening air. Walking home down the farm track, she revelled in the intense perfume of wild honeysuckle brimming over the farm wall, and the screech of swallows enjoying their last flight before velvet darkness fell. Thinking of poor Rosie and her loss, Ada asked herself yet again if it were wrong to feel comforted by life and the beauty of the world when others were going through such terrible times?

Childbirth was her job, her profession; it had never ceased to amaze her how the female body could grow and change so radically, then produce another human being through the final, unquestionably difficult and painful part of the process. It was an everyday miracle which people took completely for granted. Most of Ada’s experience of birthing had been with women who would be giving away the child they had just delivered; within weeks the baby would be adopted, and the mother would re-enter the world she had fled in order to hide away her shameful secret. Nevertheless, Ada had seen, albeit briefly, the joy and love on young mothers’ faces as they beheld their baby for the very first time. It was absolutely heartbreaking that this could not be what Rosie experienced.

Glad to be home, Ada was drawn to the letter she had received earlier that day from Jamie. Reading it again would give her the only comfort she might find just now. Taking a cup of tea and the letter, she sat in the fading light on the garden bench with the pert little robin for company and eagerly opened the letter.

My dearest darling love,

How are you?

Ada instinctively pressed the letter to her face; was there the faintest hint of the tobacco Jamie smoked, or the soap he used, even the sterilized hospital scrubs he wore? Quickly continuing, she read on.