Rosie didn’t mean to make things worse but as she saw her nana standing up she knew that she had to do something, she had to do something and she had to save him, somehow, this couldn’t be happening. Nothing was making any sense, she had this ringing in her ears that wouldn’t stop and there were arms on her that suddenly she wanted to get away from and she was only aware of stumbling towards the birthing table. She didn’t mean to push that doctor, she really didn’t, but he was in her way and Kaz too, he was shouting, begging the doctors to help, but she pushed past him and she had to get to Will, she had to be the one to hold him, she could save him, no one else could, but she could, she had to – and they had to stop crowding him like that. ‘Move!’ she screamed at them all. ‘Move!’ They were all staring down at his little naked body, and so she pushed them away, every last one of them. Every last set of hands, every arm held out to block her, or comfort her, had to be pushed away until she could get to her baby.

He was still lying there, attached.

She had never imagined that the pouch, their pouch, Will’s home for nine months, that they had stroked and spoken to and loved – she had never imagined that it could repulse her. The deep sucking red of the insides of it, visible now through that awful cut down the front, wet and dripping. The different skins, the layers that had grown with him, expanded with him. The bio-socket for the audio adapter, useless now. Obscene. And the umbilical cord.

‘Get him out!’ she screamed – and a doctor stepped forward and she spun round, furious. ‘Not you! Get away from him!’

He held his arms up, the doctor, as if he was afraid of her, letting her do what she wanted as he edged away from the bed. And so she reached in and clasped the cord that was sticky and limp in her hands, clasped it and pulled, and pulled, as it leaked on her fingers and fluid ran down to her wrist, but it wouldn’t come out of the pouch lining. She screamed as she pulled, but it made no difference. She couldn’t free him.

But there was her nana. She had something, was holding something, and she stepped forwards and spoke in a quiet voice and told her that she could help. Without waiting for a response, her nana reached out and cut the cord. And baby Will was free at last.