He doesn’t answer, but presses his hands into the mattress on either side of her, leaning in to kiss her. She pecks him back, but when he makes to kiss her more passionately the baby struggles, Tom’s weight pushing her into Aurelia’s chest.

‘Tom,’ she says, pressing a hand against his shoulder to ease him away. ‘You’ll hurt the baby.’

But he persists. He straightens his legs and raises his hips, his mouth hard against hers, his tongue searching. She turns her head away in rejection. She is feeding their child, for heaven’s sake, can’t he see that?

He raises himself to his full height, his eyes blazing. What is wrong with him? She has a urinary tract infection that has knocked her for six, and she is still bleeding. He knows this. But it seems only his needs matter.

Suddenly, without any warning, he swings his arm back and cracks her across the face with all his might. She reels, gasps. Her cheek burns and her eyes brim with tears. She stares up at the horrible, cruel expression on his face and dissolves into tears.

‘Tom! Why did you do that?’

She sits up with a gasp, her heart racing, and looks down into the emptiness of her arms. Where is the baby?

A low cry tells her Coco is in her crib, and slowly she realizes that she was dreaming. Thank God it was just a dream. Tom didn’t hit her. She dreamed it, and it’s over now.

With shaking hands, she reaches down the side of the bed and pulls out the red, leather-bound diary with ‘AF’ inscribed in gold lettering. The diary that Tom bought her, and in which she records her dreams, as per the midwife’s instructions. We want to keep an eye on you, the midwife said. We need to make sure you’re well inside and out.

She writes the date and the dream.

Tom smacked me across the face when I wouldn’t have sex with him????

She stares at the words on the page, and wonders whether she should score them out.

The baby’s cries get louder, insistent. ‘There, there, baby girl,’ she coos softly to Coco, lifting her out of the crib and relishing that moment when, as always, Coco rolls her shoulders and bottom back in a big stretch, before sensing the proximity of a nipple and widening her mouth like a bird, searching for it. A spear of pain chases right up through the nipple to Aurelia’s shoulder, collarbone, and all the way back down to her knees. She groans at the sharp scorch of it as the baby latches on and suckles.

Her heart continues to race and her mind reels with images from the dream. The look on his face when she rejected him. The crack of his hand against her cheek.