The nurse operated the brake and gave a brisk, “here we are!” before delivering her warning to Patrick, indicating the clock on the wall opposite. “Fifteen minutes,” she said.

Her shoes squeaked away up the ward. Lauren and Patrick looked at the babies.

“Which one have you got?” asked Patrick.

She turned the little name tag on the delicate wrist of the sleeping child in her arms. The words Baby Tranter #1 were written on it in blue sharpie.

“Morgan,” said Lauren.

Patrick bent over the trolley containing the other one. Later, everyone would say that the twins looked like their father, but at this moment she couldn’t see a single similarity between the fully grown man and the scrunched-up bud of a baby. The boys certainly resembled each other—two peas popped from the same pod, or the same pea, twice. Riley had the same wrinkled little face as his brother, the same long fingers and uncannily perfect fingernails. They made the same expression when they yawned. Slightly irritatingly, someone in theatre had dressed them in identical white sleep suits, taken from the bag Lauren and Patrick had brought with them, though there had been other colours available. She had intended to dress one of them in yellow. Without the name tags they could easily have been mistaken for each other and how would anyone ever know? Thank goodness for the name tags, then. In her arms, Morgan moved his head from side to side and half-opened his eyes. She watched them slowly close.

They’d been given a single trolley for both babies to sleep in. Riley was lying under Patrick’s gaze in the clear plastic cot-tray bolted to the top of the trolley. Underneath the baby there was a firm, tightly fitting mattress, and folded at either end of this were two blankets printed with the name of the hospital. The cot was the wrong shape for its cargo. The plastic tray and the mattress were unforgivingly flat, and the baby was a ball. A woodlouse in your palm, one that curls up when frightened. Patrick moved the trolley slightly, abruptly, and Riley’s little arms and legs flew out, a five-pointed star. He curled up slowly, at the same speed as his brother’s closing eyes. Back in a ball, he came to rest slightly on his side. To hold a baby, it ought to be bowl-shaped, a little nest. Why had no one thought of that before?

“Hello, Riley,” said Patrick in an odd squeaky voice. He straightened up. “It sounds weird, saying that.”

Lauren reached out and drew the trolley closer to her bed, carefully, trying to prevent the little ball from rolling. She used her one free hand to tuck a blanket over him and down the sides of the mattress, to hold him in place.

“Hello, Riley,” she said. “Yeah, it does a bit. I think that’s normal, though. We’ll get used to it.” She turned her face to the child in her arms. “Hello, Morgan,” she said. She was still waiting for the rush of love. That one you feel, all at once the second they’re born, like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. The rush of love that people with children always go on about. She’d been looking forward to it. It worried her that she hadn’t felt it yet.