The pouch was lying to the side, discarded like a used skin. The fluid that had been Will’s world was still running through the channels on the birthing table to collect below. And blood was dripping down, from the pouch, from the birth, dark viscous swirls of it that she couldn’t take her eyes from.

Holly stumbled away from the table as more people rushed in, as they pulled out from somewhere the tiny pads of a child-sized defibrillator and began to send electric shocks through his limp body. They were so tiny, those pads – she couldn’t believe how small they were. Like a baby’s toy. No bigger than his tiny, curled-up hands.

She felt her legs giving way beneath her, flopped forward against the windowpane, tried to catch herself on the sill but failed, falling instead to her knees, jolting into the skirting board. And then she just stayed there on the floor. She had no sound to make. She could not cry out the way Rosie had, or the way Kaz was now screaming. She didn’t understand how this could have happened.

The machine flatlined. Someone was saying stop. Someone else shouting at them to keep going. She could see Rosie leaning her whole body into her mother’s arms, a continuous noise coming from her throat. How dare you, Kaz was screaming at the doctors, how dare you stop, keep going, keep going, how dare you, keep going, his words on a continuous loop. They tried again. Stand back, they commanded the room. It went quieter. They tried again.

But Holly knew it wasn’t going to help. She had seen from the angle of his head, the unnatural colour of the skin on his face, around his mouth. He was dead already.

Rosie was looking at her, still held in her mother’s arms.

‘Nana?’ she was saying. ‘What’s happening? I don’t understand. Nana?’

Holly pressed her hand against the wall, tried to claw into it with her fingernails, until she reached the windowsill and could grab hold. Then she lifted her knee, which was suddenly throbbing, and placed her foot flat on the ground. She was going to stand up again. That’s what she was going to do first. She was not going to lie crumpled on the floor. She was going to help Rosie, and that meant she needed to stand up.