‘Yes. I hope I’ll be able to make it,’ I say non-committally, relief making me feel oddly shaky. I pick up my own changing bag and drape it across the handles of the pram. My feet take an involuntary step towards the door. ‘Maybe, I’ll have to see how …’ I gesture vaguely towards the baby and rush towards the automatic doors of the doctor’s surgery, keen to be outside. Once out on the pavement, I gulp in great, deep breaths of hot, stale air, thick with the scent of the fresh tarmac they are laying across the street before I start to laugh. Idiot. Fancy jumping at the sound of a zipper.

Naomi brings over a gypsy tart and a packet of my favourite posh teabags later in the afternoon and I am pleased to see her, grateful to her for making time to visit. She moves into the kitchen, switching on the kettle and slicing two big sections of tart for the both of us as if it’s she who lives here, not me. An image rises in my mind of a cuckoo, thrusting its way into a nest, before I blink and it is gone, and there is only Naomi, wiping her hands on a tea towel before she places a mug of tea and a plate in front of me. There’s something comforting about it – maternal almost – and pity makes the gypsy tart taste stale in my mouth. Naomi would have made a wonderful mother.

‘So, tell me again what you saw?’ The baby wails as Naomi settles in the chair across from me, not bothering to avert her gaze as I unsnap my top and place the baby at my breast. The wailing stops abruptly and I feel my shoulders lower, tension leaving my body.

‘I didn’t see anything really. Nothing concrete.’ I feel silly, Rav’s reaction making me half convinced that there wasn’t anything out there other than a seagull or something equally as benign. ‘Something white. That’s all. I thought it looked like a person, rushing through the trees, but Rav says that’s ridiculous. And I suppose it is. I mean, in the months we’ve lived here I’ve never seen anyone in those woods.’

Naomi takes a bite of her tart, chewing slowly and I get the impression she is mulling over my words before she speaks. ‘Well,’ she says eventually, ‘Rav does have a point. You haven’t seen a single person in those woods since you got here. But then, it’s not really been the weather for outings in the woods ’til now, has it? I mean, winter was so horrifically wet, and there was all the flooding, and it’s only really been the last few weeks that things have dried out enough for anyone to want to walk in the woods.’

‘I suppose.’