Later, she’ll tell him about the dream in wounded tones and he’ll hold her close, kiss the exact spot on her cheek where the pseudo-memory still stings. ‘Did you eat some cheese before going to bed?’ he’ll laugh.

Coco releases the nipple and sinks back to sleep in Aurelia’s arms, satisfied. Aurelia’s breast feels smaller, emptied, and she fastens her bra before lifting Coco to her chest and rubbing her back. Unlike Gaia, Coco tends to wind really well, bringing up a healthy belch within a few seconds that tells Aurelia she’s ready to be settled back into the crib.

But Aurelia cannot sleep. She rises, her head swampy and her body aching, to check on Gaia in her room next door. She sees a foot hanging out of the side of the duvet, a mass of blonde curls, and decides to let her sleep on.

Aurelia pads along the wooden floor of the old house, but it has all the foreign dimensions of a hotel and she makes a dreadful creak that she is certain will wake both children. Mercifully, neither stirs. She heads downstairs to the large kitchen swimming in morning sunlight.

The house may yet feel strange, but that is to be expected – she’s only been here eight days, and with a brand new baby, and this is not to be their home, in any case. This six-bedroom traditional red-painted wooden lodge named ‘Granhus’, Norwegian for ‘Spruce House’ and constructed in the nineteenth century, will be properly restored after their high-concept summer home is built close by. That will be their summer home, and Granhus will become Tom’s Norwegian office for his architecture firm. Or a holiday rental. Or both. It’s big enough for both. Either way, he promised that it wouldn’t be their base. She found it creepy when they bought it, and she finds it creepy now.

From the window by the sink she can see fields whitened with fresh snow all the way to the horizon, where serrated, snow-dusted mountains soar into the clouds. It’s almost Christmas. From the window by the table, the garden sweeps down to a cliff, an ancient forest of towering pine trees gathered on the site of the new building. Beyond that, she can just make out a belt of deep blue – the fjord.

‘We’ll get a boat,’ Tom had said when they came to view this plot of land. ‘We’ll take day trips up the fjord. Maybe sail all the way to Ålesund, have high tea, then turn around and head back home for supper.’

Ålesund is where her father spent his childhood and where her grandparents lived. They’re buried there now, along with aunts and uncles and cousins she never met. It’s a charming port town on Norway’s west coast, and she has fond memories as a child walking around the colourful art nouveau quarter.