The pain had continued identical for hours. A circle tightening as it widened, and biting as it tightened, and widening even as it bit. There was no end to it except in silence, and that silence came when my growls of agony stopped as Catherine was released from my body. Silence as the midwife shut her urgent mouth, and silence from a baby who did not cry. Operating according to her instructions the midwife took Catherine away the moment the cord was clamped and cut. As I was on all fours I didn’t see her.

Catherine’s birth, I think, was at sunrise.

A cold early morning light, a lot of new noises. Clangs and rattles—hospital trolleys. A man whistling. Everything seemed to echo.

James had been outside the room all night and now I heard him next door. I heard the midwife say, “Vicar,” and James said, ‘Please let my wife hold her.’

But before that, he had said, “Can you wrap her up?”

—

I went upstairs, deeply chilled from all that sitting in the cold. James was lying on his front, eyes closed. I got into bed and he stirred and felt for me. “Yvie, you’re icy,” he mumbled when he touched my arm, and slept again.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered. “All I wanted was to know.”

When I first remembered his voice I could have erupted in rage as the hairs rose on my neck—you liar—but what had enveloped me instead was a patient, lenient, yearning. I lay by his side and spoke to him as he drifted through a half sleep. “You said you didn’t see her, but I heard you ask the midwife to wrap her up. You were there when she was naked. You must have seen her.” I waited as his breathing became shallower, less rhythmic, as he sighed his way into consciousness. Then he rolled onto his back, his eyes open and vacant.

“I’m not asking you to tell me now. But you have to know that I know that you’ve been pretending all this while. Pretending that you didn’t see her. Pretending with everything else.”

He blinked rapidly, squeezed his eyes shut.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

I stroked his forehead, then his eyelids. Men’s eyelids are very soft.

“My love,” I said, “that’s not true.”