‘Shush, Daddy,’ Gaia says, and Aurelia spots Tom’s boots in the doorway. ‘Mumma is my baby. She’s very sleepy.’

Coco’s cries grow frantic, desperate, that urgent shrill tremble signalling that she needs to be picked up. Tom crosses the room and lifts her out of the basket. Aurelia could applaud him for it. This is what love is, she thinks. Not flowers, not romantic notes. There is simply no gesture of love that comes close to the act of tending to Coco and allowing her to stay on the floor underneath all these warm blankets, the aches of her body lessening as she gives in to the urge to lie flat and still.

Coco is still crying from the other side of the room. Tom is pacing with her, bouncing her lightly against his shoulder and rubbing her back, humming something. Gaia is reading another story, and Aurelia is so comfortable. She would give anything for even ten minutes’ sleep. Pay any amount of money, do any amount of work, just to sleep. But Coco’s cries have changed gear. They’re urgent, higher in pitch. Aurelia opens her eyes and looks over at Tom.

What she sees makes her sit upright with a hand clapped to her mouth. Tom is holding the baby in the air above his face. In the corner beside him is a woman facing the wall. She is dripping wet, as if she has crawled out of the fjord, her clothes old and bedraggled. Aurelia opens her mouth to ask what she’s doing here, but Tom’s face is bright with fury, a vein in his temple pulsing as he begins to shout.

‘Shut up, you little bitch! Shut up!’

Coco’s mouth is wide open in a prolonged wail, tears streaming down her face and her legs wheeling frantically in the air. And then he shakes her. His hands squeeze Coco’s sides and he shakes her like a doll, and Aurelia cannot get to her feet fast enough to stop him from shaking her three, four, five times, her head bobbing dangerously.

Aurelia is on her feet, the room spins and sways as she lurches towards him, and with a yell he half drops, half throws Coco to the ground. The woman in the corner doesn’t move. Aurelia holds her arms out to catch her, but she trips on something – a toy tractor or a pram, she’s not sure – and falls, and even before she reaches the ground she knows she can’t reach Coco.

Coco hits the ground a moment before Aurelia reaches her and is still.