‘Oh, but you have done everything wrong,’ Joan cried, a terrible strain in her voice. ‘For you have brought the worst kind of trouble into the home of strangers.’

The morning light warmed the bed. Soon I ought to be up and about. But my womb bled, and my breasts leaked, and my baby was dead.

‘Tell them I am sick, and cover for me today,’ I told Joan. ‘You will have to do my chores. And tell Mrs Baxter not to bring anything up to the room. If she tries, then you must take it from her and bring it yourself.

‘If you are caught with this dead babe, we will be in terrible trouble,’ whimpered Joan.

‘I will give the babe my own burial,’ I told her. ‘I will give her my own private farewell. It is no one’s concern but mine. I will take her to the river, and she will wash into the sea, where her father sails.’

Joan did not stop me. She must have thought me mad, feverish, seized by fear, but she did not stop me. She dressed and put on my apron and went downstairs.

As soon as the door clicked behind her, I got up and locked it.

I went back to the bed and lifted my baby up. She was colder and heavier than I had remembered, as if her little, light soul had left and in its place was my awful, awful grief. I swaddled her again and placed her gently into my creel and covered her with a linen, soft and gentle, as if I were tucking her into a cradle for a nap. I was about to put the bonnet on her when I stopped. I could not be parted from it. It was the only thing I would have left to remember her by.

It was mid-morning now. I could tell by the arrival of the grocer’s cart. In a few minutes everyone would be in the kitchen and the pantry, putting the delivery away.

I dressed, padding my bleed and my breasts with rags. I picked up the creel and unlocked the door. The landing was silent. I crept downstairs and slipped out of the front door, straight onto the street.