The midwife, Heidi, who betrayed my trust, but who knew I wouldn’t be keeping the baby, warned me not to name her.

But I did. To me, she was Alice.

I thought about Alice every day. What she looked like, what she sounded like, how she’d be soothed when she cried. But I signed her life over to complete strangers and vowed never to seek her out.

Back at home, Dad busied himself straight away with work and was rarely seen and mum carried on as though I was recovering from a sprained wrist.

I turned sixteen. A milestone some parents may celebrate generously but I stumbled upon a few badly wrapped presents on the kitchen table and I opened them with no one around me to wish me a happy birthday.

Those few days after Alice was taken away, I felt that pull, that longing, like a constant feeling that I had forgotten to do something, there was always this nagging feeling. It never really went away.

‘Hormones,’ my mum told me when I tried to explain it to her.

Of course I would get over the baby. She was never really mine in the first place. Mum said with a high tone that she presumed would ease me.

But that wasn’t how I felt at all. I felt she did belong to me and that she was taken from me without my proper consent. I was backed into a corner by agencies and authorities and my parents. But they neglected to realise that she was a part of me and would forever be so. I would never forget her. And I would always be tortured by her absence in my life.

Weeks went by and the pain lifted only enough so I could function. Mum found me a job at the local leisure centre mopping the changing rooms and clearing out the lost property. That was what got me interested in fitness. I used to stand and watch the classes through the glass. Realising I was never going to go back to school, I applied for a diploma in fitness and nutrition at the college and got accepted for the following year. But just as I felt that there might be some sort of hope for me, I read a headline in the local paper.

Teacher’s wife commits suicide over affair with pupil.

I didn’t even need to read the article to know it was Callum’s wife.

After I finished the diploma course and left home to go to university, paid for with a loan I’m still paying back, I received a letter from my parents telling me they were immigrating to Australia. They gave me a forwarding address for practicalities, but what was missing from the letter was the part that told me I would be welcome anytime.

Thinking back to those days when I was a mother for merely a moment, it seemed obvious that I would become submissive once again when all my choices were removed. Here I sat in the third trimester of pregnancy, with just days to go, and I only had Annie. This time there would be no parents with their unforgiving looks of disdain. I had never planned for a next time, but once I knew I was pregnant with Ben’s baby, I thought we’d do this together. But then could I blame him for running hundreds of miles away? I practically accused him of killing my best friend. No one takes that level of accusation lightly. I knew he wasn’t close to Annie, not in the way she tried so desperately to portray. Why would he want to stick around? What was there to stay for? I had, once again, managed to lose one of the most precious things in my life. I watched him go without a second glance. I felt that momentary pull. That familiar pang as he walked out of the door. Go after him, Daisy.