The corridors were relatively quiet. Most visitors had left, the dinner service was long finished and the nursing staff were occupied elsewhere for the moment. Paula did her best to look like a regular visitor, a slightly lost one peering at the room numbers.

She walked around for ten minutes but saw no sign of Brooke. If she stayed any longer, it would start to look peculiar. She reached the far corner of the floor and was about to turn and leave when she caught a glimpse of a young woman with blonde hair—blonde hair Paula recognised from the TV coverage outside the courtroom. Brooke Lester moved slowly past the open doorway of the room with the typical stooped posture of a woman recovering from a recent caesarean.

Paula froze, not wanting to be caught gawping. Coming to the hospital was a mistake. An invasion of this woman’s privacy. She should leave immediately.

‘Excuse me. Are you a doctor?’ asked Brooke, standing in the doorway of her room. She pointed at Paula’s medical bag, the stethoscope clearly visible.

‘Yes. I’m a GP. But not a doctor here,’ Paula responded. ‘I’m just visiting.’

‘Oh right. Sorry.’

‘Are you okay? Do you want me to find someone for you?’

‘No, no, I’m okay. Well, except for—you know …’

Brooke indicated her hand cupping her sore belly and mimed the line of her caesarean incision through her nightgown. But she was grinning too, sending herself up. She was so open, eager to connect, in a way that was hugely winning.

‘I don’t want to bother them when they’re busy.’ Brooke waggled her hand in the direction of the nurses’ station. ‘I’ve got a question about my baby. You’d know about babies, yeah?’

‘Oh—a bit. But if you need a paediatrician to—’

‘Can you just check if something looks normal? Do you mind?’ asked Brooke.

‘Sure,’ said Paula. Nerves were fluttering in her chest but she reminded herself: she was simply responding to a request for help.

Brooke beckoned Paula into her room then shuffled across the floor in her sheepskin slippers. It was a private room, fresh and cheerful, with a large window, a rocking chair in one corner and an armchair next to the bed. Pink paraphernalia filled every available surface and a blanket printed with pink and red koalas was wrapped around the newborn lying in the transparent plastic crib.

‘Oh my God, she’s so beautiful,’ Paula whispered. Her instinct was to whisper—reverence for this tiny exquisite creature. ‘How old is she?’

‘Three days.’

The baby was half awake, squirming in the crib, stretching one body segment at a time, trying out her new limbs now that she was out of the uterus and had more room to manoeuvre. Whatever the trauma of her arrival in the world, this infant looked full-term and healthy enough to thrive.