“Here we are,” said the nurse, as they arrived at a door marked Room Eleven. She knocked on it, then opened the hatch and peered through. The sound of keys in the lock from inside, and the door swung inwards, to reveal another nurse, not nearly as friendly. “Lauren?” called the nurse. “There’s someone here to see you, sweetheart.”

Lauren sat in a chair next to the window. She looked small, wary, hunched up. Her legs were splattered with dried mud from the riverbank. The nurse who had got up to open the door sat down next to Lauren, but lightly, as if ready to leap up again. Lauren raised her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, pointing at the stroller, “oh, no. I thought I could do it, but it’s too soon.”

She stood up out of her seat and tried to back away, pressing herself into the bars on the window, crossing her arms over her body, eyes large and scared. Patrick took a step inside the room.

“Honey,” he said, “what’s wrong?”

“No, Patrick, please, take them away,” she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“But Lauren,” said Patrick, as she started to shake her head and repeat “no, no, no,” getting louder, and the nurse in the room formed a human barrier, taking up all the space between him and his wife.

“Let’s try again later, shall we?” said Lauren’s nurse to Patrick’s, as together they walked him backwards out of the door and the nurse inside shut it, hard. The locks turned loudly in the silence of the corridor.

In the stroller, the babies seemed startled, but then their little faces screwed up and they started to cry.

“Oh, don’t cry, shh,” he said to them, and wiggled the stroller back and forth. They didn’t stop. It was almost mechanical; insistent and relentless. Each of them filled the gaps where the other breathed, creating a continuous, ululating shriek at the frequency of a band saw going through metal.

Under the noise, behind the door to Room Eleven, there was the muffled sound of Lauren crying and the low murmur of the nurse trying to comfort her, persuade her to stop.

Patrick’s eyes were filling up, too. Harper reached out and patted him on the shoulder. She felt for him then, witnessing his total powerlessness, his palpable sense of impotence. The noise of the twins’ crying went on and on.

“Right then,” said the nurse, taking the stroller by the handle and pointing it back the way they’d come, “I think these boys are a tad tired. Shall we all go for a little stroll?”

*   *   *