She started to shout and swear then, a fiery, threat-filled tirade that circled the question of who was going to acquire cannabis for her if I wasn’t around, and though I was sorely tempted to share the news about the end of my relationship and subsequent homelessness, I simply said, ‘You have David’s number, Mother dear. Ask him for weed yourself.’

I said goodbye to Meg, checked in my suitcase, and took my seat on the plane. I’d been booked in first class, which meant that I was served an amazing meal of rump steak, garlic potatoes, and tenderstem broccoli, followed by sticky toffee pudding with banana ice cream. I’d even put on mascara and lipstick, and wore a smart white blouse with skinny jeans and white sandals, and when the other people in first class spoke to me they didn’t look wary, or full of pity. I felt almost happy, excited instead of skewered by fear, like I could hold a conversation with someone without apologizing for my general crapness.

In short, I felt like I was a different person entirely.

And I was a different person. As I stepped off the plane at Ålesund and headed into the terminal, a woman was holding up a piece of white card with my new name spelled out in red capitals:

SOPHIE HALLERTON

   5   

BUILDING A NEST

Then

Aurelia sits up in bed and glances woozily at the contraption to her right.

The crib.

There’s a noise coming from it that sounds like an alarm, but something at the back of her mind tells her she can’t just reach out and press a button to quieten it down. The room is strange, an arrangement of garish antique dressers and a monstrous wardrobe and that hideous purple wallpaper with a pattern that resembles moths fluttering against the sky at dusk … slowly, the foreign shapes and smells shift into familiarity.

She moves her legs carefully to the edge of the bed and leans forward to check on the soft, mewling bundle of her daughter, her peachy cheeks and rose-petal eyelids dotted with milk spots, a tuft of blonde downy hair springing up from the crown of her head. As always, her tightly bunched firsts are held at the side of her head, and she is wrapped caterpillar-like in a turmeric-yellow hand-knit blanket gifted from a client.

Aurelia watches as Coco drifts back to sleep, then leans forward to ensure the blanket is safely tucked under the mattress. The movement seems to cause her internal organs to slide around the spacious room of her abdomen, and she recalls with a shudder Coco’s quick birth back in London just four weeks earlier.