For long moments Rosa could hardly breathe, afraid of doing the wrong thing, of breaking the spell. At first she thought Ada must be looking past her, at some flower or the sparkle of sunlight on glass, but no, she was definitely looking at her, and this was a real smile, the first proper one Rosa had ever seen. She could hardly believe it. Not only was angry, spiky, discontented Ada actually smiling, but she was smiling at her!

Rosa had thought that Esme might have smiled a couple of times, but those expressions had been nothing like this. The smile reached Ada’s eyes. And as she looked at Rosa, it seemed as if she really saw her, that she was looking for her rather than staring at some random spot.

‘Oh.’ Rosa let out her held breath. ‘Oh. Hello.’

It seemed a feeble response, but Ada’s smile immediately deepened. A dimple flashed in one rounded cheek and her mouth opened wide enough to glimpse pink gums. The tiny girl looked delighted, right down to her soul. Rosa did not think anyone, in all her life, had ever smiled at her like that – as if she were the most wonderful, miraculous thing they had ever seen.

Something clicked and fell into place as Rosa glimpsed the soul inside Ada, the small human, the person she would one day become. She had once heard James talk about the hybrid orchids he grew, and how you never knew how a seed was going to turn out, or whether it would even grow at all. You planted it and then you watered and nurtured the soil, patiently and diligently, hoping that, in the end, something would flourish.

Sometimes, James had said, the seed failed to sprout at all. But at other times you were eventually rewarded with the sight of a bright, green shoot poking up through the dirt. And then you knew you had something, even if you didn’t yet know exactly what that something might be. It was the best moment, he’d said, because it meant that all the love, all the care and attention that you’d poured in had not been wasted. And then you were glad that you had kept faith with it, after all, even when it appeared as if nothing whatever was happening.

Now, at last, Rosa could see that there was some part of Ada that did respond to her, that needed and appreciated her, that was even delighted and comforted by her, that perhaps even loved her. And suddenly she didn’t care that the baby would probably be crying inconsolably again in a few minutes, and that she would not know what exactly had changed, or what she had done wrong, or how to fix it. Here, in this moment, right now, Ada was smiling at her, and nothing else mattered in the entire world.

‘Oh my goodness,’ Rosa breathed. ‘I would walk through such fires for you.’