That was the first time I noticed him looking at me, looking at me with this sort of mingled heat and joy that I instantly felt mirrored inside me, like my body was answering his call in a way that my conscious mind had no control over. Yes, ever since then I’ve felt his looks long before I’ve seen them. I feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, and a sense of anticipation washing over me in one long delicious shudder, because I know that soon after he looks at me, he will be touching me, kissing me.

Now I feel his hand on my shoulder and I lean my cheek against his fingers.

‘You’re crying,’ he says.

‘I’m chopping onions,’ I say, putting down the knife and turning round to face him. ‘You know that all Esther will eat is Mummy’s homemade lasagne? Here, you should watch me make it, so you know the recipe. First, chop the onions …’

‘Claire …’ Greg stops me from picking up the knife again, and turns me towards him. ‘Claire, we have to talk about it, don’t we?’

He looks so uncertain, so lost and so reluctant, that I want to say no – no, we don’t have to talk about it, we can just pretend that today is like yesterday, and all the days before that when we didn’t know any better. We can pretend not to know, and who knows how long we might be able to go on like this, so happy, so perfect?

‘She likes a lot of tomato purée in the sauce,’ I say. ‘And also a really big slug of ketchup …’

‘I don’t know what to do or say,’ Greg says, his voice breaking on an inward breath. ‘I’m not sure how to be.’

‘And then, just at the end, add a teaspoon of Marmite.’

‘Claire,’ he says with a sob, and draws me into his arms. And I stand there in his embrace with my eyes closed, breathing in his scent, my arms at my side, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. ‘Claire, how are we going to tell the children?’

Friday, 13 March 1992

Caitlin Is Born

This is the bracelet they gave you in the hospital – pink because you are a girl. It says: ‘Baby Armstrong.’ They put it on your ankle, and it kept slipping off because you were so tiny, a whole month early, to the day. You were supposed to be an April baby. I had imagined daffodils and blue skies and April showers, but you decided to be born one month early on a cold wet Friday, Friday 13th, no less, not that we were worried about that. If anyone was ever born to overcome bad omens it was you, and you knew it, greeting the world with an almighty shout – not a cry or a wail, but a roar of intent, I thought. A declaration of war.