In spite of all the vehemence and teeth gnashing, it didn’t occur to Genevieve to try to run away. All of her dreams of keeping the baby relied on the cooperation of her father. Life without Daddy’s financial support was inconceivable. And so she had to believe she could find a way of changing his mind about what should happen when her child was born.

Doctor Peters came each week. He was a key figure in the whole baby-snatching conspiracy, but she sensed moments of sympathy from him. Chinks of light. Each time she saw him, she wept and raged in front of him, threatening to throw herself from the window, appealing to him as a doctor, a God-fearer and a father. How could it be right and humane, she implored him, to shut a pregnant woman in a room for six months and then steal her baby?

“You agreed to this plan,” the doctor insisted. “I was there in the room when you said it was what you wanted.”

“I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. I was frightened.”

“You’re not being rational.”

“No, I’m not.”

The best she could get from Doctor Peters (secure in her father’s pay) was a promise to speak to Daddy about letting her walk in the gardens when the servants weren’t around. Permission was granted, and for a few short weeks she paced the grounds—taking huge lungfuls of fresh air, sighing her frustration into the breeze—before her ankles started swelling and her blood pressure rising, at which time complete bed rest was prescribed, and the outside world shrank back to the view through her window; the broken, labyrinthine trivia related by her mother; the dewy eyes of the family doctor.

Two weeks early, Genevieve’s waters began slowly to seep. Every now and again she felt a gentle twist in her womb, which made her want to stop whatever she was doing and breathe deeply. She knew it had started, but tried to pretend to herself that nothing was happening. As long as the baby stayed inside, it remained hers.

After a few hours the twists became more of a wringing out, lasting for around a minute, during which she panted shallow little breaths. It was late in the evening. Her mother would have gone to bed by now. Her father would be sitting in the drawing room in his dressing gown, reading. In times past she would have sat on the other side of the fire, and they would occasionally have looked up at each other and smiled. Not now.

She dragged herself out of her room, down the corridor and across the landing, gripping the banisters for support as a contraction, the strongest so far, wrenched at her insides—and then descended the stairs as quickly as she could before the next could come. She could see the light under the drawing room door. She yanked it open.