Patrick said, “They left a message on my phone, but I didn’t get it until this morning. What happened?”

Lauren couldn’t respond to that immediately. She was floored by another wave of sobbing. A red-haired man—perhaps a new uncle of Mrs Gooch’s baby girl—cheered loudly as he rounded the corner into the bay, holding aloft an ostentatious bunch of lilies. Mrs Gooch glanced pointedly at Lauren and the cheering man said, “What?” and “Oh,” as he looked in their direction. Patrick turned and briskly pulled the curtain around, giving everyone the relief of the impression of privacy. After a time, words pushed through Lauren’s swollen throat in bits.

“I don’t know why I keep crying. I’m fine, I’ll be fine. Nothing happened. I think I’m going mad, that’s all.”

She gave a mirthless laugh, holding on tightly to her husband, making dark patches of wet and snot on the shoulder of his shirt. Patrick smelled of tea tree shampoo and his own slightly smoky scent. He smelled like home.

“Lauren, my heart,” said Patrick as he held Lauren’s face between his hands and smiled down at her. “You were mad before.”

That made her laugh for real, and the bad spell was broken. They both laughed, and then Lauren was crying again, and Patrick wiped her eyes with a wad of the cheap hospital tissues from the box by the bed. At that moment, the babies were almost as serene as Mrs Gooch’s. She really didn’t know why she kept crying. It didn’t make sense, when she saw what she and Patrick had made.

Patrick moved towards the cot. “Morning, boys,” he said. “I hope you’ve been kind to your mother.” He turned back to Lauren. “Did they keep you awake?”

“Of course they did. They’re babies.”

Her vision began to swim and sway, her eyelids felt heavy.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but his voice was muffled and far away. Sorry for what, she thought.

When she opened her eyes he was on the other side of the bed. Odd, she thought, I don’t remember falling asleep. A few seconds had gone, snap, a filmic scene change.

“I spoke to my mother this morning,” he was saying. “She sends her love. She wanted me to tell you, you did really well, you know, most women would have gone straight for a C-section.”

Lauren would never stop wishing that she had done just that. She couldn’t go back now, nothing would change what had happened during the birth, her stupid decisions, her worthless birth plan. But the regret was heavy on her. She felt like a fool for defying the consultant, even as she blamed him for planting the doubts in her mind, about whether she was capable, whether she would succeed. Perhaps if he’d believed in her from the start, she would have been fine.

“If it was me giving birth to twins,” the consultant had said, “I’d have a C-section.”

Ridiculous. He was a man. How could he know what it was like to give birth?