THEY WERE STANDING as a family on the balcony that overlooked the lobby of the FullLife birthing centre. It was huge, the lobby, several floors tall, with golden sunlight streaming in through the windows and digital panels stretching all the way up the central pillars. They were filled with colourful photos of babies. Thousands of newborn babies, smiling and laughing their way into the world.

‘Is it that one?’ Kaz said, pointing up to the highest photo. ‘Is that the first baby?’

Rosie’s mum had a smile playing about her lips. She was the first baby, of course, and Rosie knew it was a photo of her. There, right at the top, above the colours and smiles and sunlight: a baby oblivious to what she meant and to all the babies that would follow as she was caught by the snap of a camera, mid-gurgle.

‘You were very cute, weren’t you, Mum?’ Rosie smiled at her mum’s raised eyebrows.

‘Good thing too,’ Daphne said. ‘I think half the world was expecting a monster.’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ said Nana, though she seemed pleased with the conversation. Proud. ‘I told them all at the time, we knew you were healthy from day one with all the check-ups … But they just wouldn’t believe it until they saw you with their own eyes. Bloody journalists.’

‘Don’t swear, Nana. Not in front of the baby.’

Rosie was joking, but only just. She actually wished her nana would stop swearing so much. She didn’t want Will’s first word to be ‘crap’.

‘See that little tuft of brown hair?’ Nana was saying. ‘Just in the middle of your head there? I always wished I’d put a ribbon on that, for the photo.’

‘Thank heavens you didn’t,’ Daphne laughed.

‘It would have been adorable.’

‘It would have looked absurd.’

Her nana looked at her mum then, and for a second Rosie thought she might have tears in her eyes. She didn’t think she’d ever seen her nana cry.

‘You were a beautiful baby,’ she said.

Kaz’s phone beeped, and she knew it would be from his dad Karl, saying they were nearly there. He’d been messaging daily, coming round to talk to Will, making plans about where Will would go to playgroup, what the best mix of milk was, who would be grandpa and who would be grandad. Now she thought about it, Nana was the last grandparent that she and Kaz had between them – that was another thing baby Will would bring with him, a whole new generation of grandparents. That would make Nana a great-grandma. Though everyone would always call her Nana.

‘Come on,’ Rosie’s mum said, turning from the photo and pressing the call button for the lift. ‘Rosie, Kaz. Let’s go and meet the newest baby in our family.’