Carefully, Melissa extracted her hand from the bundle and ran the pads of her fingers gently across Leah’s cheek. Three weeks old. Well, three weeks, two days and about, what, seven hours? And already the memory of her life without Leah in it felt like somewhere she had visited once but then forgotten. Nothing in Melissa’s world had ever amounted to much right up until the point when Leah had burst out of her, pink and perfect and ready to take on the world. There had been no terrifying little hiatus of silence like you saw in the films. Leah came into the delivery room shouting without any need for a prompting slap on the backside. It was clear right from her very first moments on earth that she was fit for the challenges of life. Even Ray had said so as he watched, awestruck, whilst his newborn daughter found Melissa’s nipple, rooted and then began to suck.

‘Nothing wrong with her survival instinct,’ he’d said as he wiped his eyes on his white cotton handkerchief. Even in that moment, Melissa had felt proud that her fella carried a real handkerchief. Who did that these days? No one from round her way, that was for sure.

But there was something a bit special about her Ray. She had known that the moment he’d walked up to the bar and ordered a shot of whisky. None of your cheap stuff either. She’d virtually had to dust the bottle as she reached it down from the shelf. There wasn’t much call for single malt in the Coach and Horses. He looked classier than your average punter, too. His jeans hadn’t come from the market and his sweater was wool, not acrylic. She’d noticed it all but not thought much about it at the time. That was how it was with city centre pubs. You got all sorts in through the door and Newcastle was no different.

He had appeared late on a busy Friday night so she hadn’t had much chance to look at him, let alone chat, but as she’d poured endless pints for her increasingly drunken customers she could feel his eyes on her. Self-consciously she straightened her shoulders as she worked so that her cleavage would look at its best, and smiled as often as she could without looking like she was a sandwich short of a picnic. People said that she had a nice smile. And nice tits for that matter.