One night I woke up suddenly, drenched in shock. I couldn’t work out what was wrong until I realized Livi wasn’t even making her usual nocturnal grunts and snorts. Anya was so deeply asleep I couldn’t sense her breathing. Moonlight edging the curtains in a glowing border gave the room an unearthly feel and my heart was thudding so hard it felt as though it would push its way out of my chest.

Scrambling out of bed, I raced round to Anya’s side to the Moses basket on its stand next to her.

Livi was lying with her arms flung back, chest rising and falling quickly. She let out a surprisingly loud fart and I held my breath in case it woke her, but it didn’t.

A wave of pure, sweet joy at this funny little girl spread through me.

It was a shock when I looked at Anya and saw her eyes were wide open, the moonlight making them shine oddly.

Then she spoke, in a wide-awake voice that was a bit too loud.

‘I’m not sure I want to do it.’

‘What?’ I whispered, puzzled.

But she turned over then and her breathing told me she was asleep again within seconds.

Just as we were beginning to fall into some sort of new routine as a three, something happened that sent everything spinning once again.

Julia hadn’t been round at ours to help with Livi as much as I’d expected, citing a series of bugs that had laid her low. Then, when Livi was three months old, Anya rang me at work in a hysterical state. Julia had been diagnosed with Adult Acute Myeloid Leukaemia – cancer of the blood and bone marrow.

The remission rate for treatment, we learned over that next week, was high, but the relapse rate, in turn, was also high.

When I got home that night, I could hear Livi screaming from outside the house. I let myself in with the key and found our daughter, puce-faced and roaring her outrage from her bouncy chair in the kitchen. I scooped her up and she arched her back and yelled even harder. Shushing and murmuring nonsense words, I took her to the changing table and sorted out the Armageddon in her nappy that had seeped yellow up to her hairline.

I shouted for Anya, but she didn’t reply. I could hear movement above though, and once I had cleaned up the baby and myself, I carried her against my shoulder and climbed the stairs. She was only making little grunty sounds now.

Anya was in our bedroom, leaning into the wardrobe. A wheelie case was open on the bed and she turned and threw in tops that she was wrenching out so hard the hangers were bouncing and tinkling together.

‘What the hell are you doing? Didn’t you hear the baby crying?’ I said.