Neither Daniel nor Jim was here. Jim was on his way, Sylvia knew, the nurse having spoken to him on the phone just after the surgery. Upset to have missed the birth, worried about both of them, he was on the next plane out. Daniel, Evelyne had told her, had turned up briefly after his shift at the construction site, when Anna was in labour, but had to leave again for the bakery and wasn’t there for the birth. Sylvia couldn’t help but worry for them. Would they have enough? Would Daniel handle his heavy workload? Would Anna cope with motherhood, all alone in that dingy flat? She wondered what was going through the girl’s mind now – whether thinking about all that was the reason she looked so miserable.

She supposed she wouldn’t see Anna again, once she’d taken her baby home to London, and the thought pained her. She’d write regularly to Evelyne, find out how she was doing. She and Anna had shared a profound experience in their lives that had led to a new beginning for both of them, but what directions would their lives take now – and the lives of these small beings in front of them? Two babies, born in the same place, at nearly the same time, but in all likelihood with such different experiences ahead. She hoped life would work out well for both girls, whatever it threw at them.

She squeezed Anna’s hand again, took a last look at her child and asked the nurse to wheel her back to her bed, leaving Anna alone in the room, quiet but for the beeps of the monitors and the occasional little sigh or almost-cry from the two newly minted bodies in the incubators.

When Jim finally arrived, bursting through the door to the ward like a building was on fire, Sylvia was half asleep, drifting in and out of vivid dreams the nurse said were probably caused by the painkillers. She forced herself awake to greet his anxious face and the million questions he’d clearly accumulated in his head during the hours he’d spent getting there. He wheeled her down the corridor to the nursery, and her heart swelled with pride on witnessing the look on his face when he saw his daughter for the first time. She felt teary then and fought back her emotion, not yet ready to admit to Jim how fiercely important it now felt to have this child in their lives, this child she hadn’t even thought she wanted.

‘Did you call Roger?’

Jim nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off the baby in the incubator. Jessica, that’s what they would call her. Jessica Tallis-Millson. A rather grand name, Sylvia thought. A name with prospects. A name suitable for a CEO or an editor or a professor or whatever heady heights her daughter wanted to reach in life.