She’d been at her Preschool Singing Time group with Gaia when the cramps started, but there were still a couple of weeks to go before her due date. Gaia had had to be poked and prodded out of the cosy nest of Aurelia’s womb twenty days after she was supposed to be in the world, and even then it took another seventy-one hours before she begrudgingly emerged, her angry shouts of protest bouncing off the walls of the hospital room. No, it was too early for these cramps to be anything more than Braxton Hicks, she’d thought, as the group sat in a circle and began to sing ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’. The midwife said false contractions were more common with subsequent children because the body had to work harder, running around after one child while growing another.

She asked the group leader for a cushion to make the hard floor more comfortable to sit on, but it didn’t work, and when she could no longer sing for pain she stood up and took Gaia quietly by the hand to their car.

She drove home, intent on having a restorative nap with Gaia to ease the cramps, but they grew worse with alarming speed, so that by the time she pulled up into their driveway in Hampstead she couldn’t make it out of the car.

‘What’s wrong, Mumma?’ Gaia asked, unclipping herself and clambering through to the front passenger seat. She placed her hands on Aurelia’s belly and looked at her mother with concern. ‘Is it the baby? Is she coming?’

Aurelia tried to answer but just then a contraction was building to an almighty peak, rearing like a tidal wave of fire, prising her jaws open and flowing out of her mouth in one long, agonizing holler. Her waters broke in a terrific gush between her legs and around the foot pedals, and in the ecstasy of the gap between that contraction and the next she found her mobile phone and dialled for an ambulance. It came five minutes later, and the team that raced up the driveway found Gaia standing by the car, hand on hip.

‘I can see my sister’s head!’ she yelled. ‘Come quick!’

A noise makes her glance up. Tom is standing in the doorway, a broad smile across his face, his arms folded and his head cocked in curiosity. She is breastfeeding Coco. She can’t remember lifting her out of the crib and putting her to her left breast – the one that always produces more milk – but Coco is feeding nicely, and surprisingly it doesn’t hurt.

Tom takes a couple of steps across the room and kneels down in front of her.

‘I thought you’d be busy with Clive,’ she says, wondering what time it is. ‘Are you done for the day?’