She stayed with me until it was all over. The baby was a boy. His head seemed disproportionally large but he was tiny, less than a foot long. He was mine – and he was perfect. But he never drew breath. I couldn’t have been more than around five and a half months gone. He could never have lived.

Auntie Jane wrapped him in a towel and took him away. She ran me a warm salt bath and I sat in there, hugging my knees to my chest until the water had gone cold, the blood dispersing to turn it a shade of orange. I was shivering and bewildered, shaking with the horror of what had just happened. She said very little. What was going through her mind, I don’t know; maybe she thought it was a life lesson I had to learn, to give me the kick up the backside that I so obviously needed.

She helped me get dry and put on a fresh nightdress, changed the sheets and tucked me up in bed, bringing me brandy with sugar and warm water for the trauma. God knows how, but I slept eventually.

The following morning was grey and miserable, one of those days when the cold seems to seep into your very bones. My mind still careening from my experience, I lay in bed, staring up through the open curtains at the veil of mist hovering ominously above the rooftops. I realised smoke was rising from the garden. I rushed to the window, only to see Auntie Jane stoking the old incinerator. At once, I understood what she had done. I tore down the stairs and ran outside, screaming hysterically, but she restrained me and led me back into the house. Her face was stony; emotionless.

‘This is how we always did things in my day,’ she said coldly, her eyes never meeting mine. ‘I watched my father do the same, twice, when my mother had miscarried. The child was never to be. There will be others in future, when the time is right. But not this one. The less said about it all, the better.’

We never spoke about it again, but I knew I could never forgive her for what she had done. I buried the memory and told no one. Years later, after a few drinks too many one night, I blurted the whole story out to Reggie. She had told me so many things about her own past, and I knew that I could trust her to keep it to herself. But it was something I knew I could never share with Jack: not now. Initially, I worried that it might change things between us, that he might look at me differently. As time passed, I didn’t want to drop a bombshell that could jeopardise the close relationship we had built. And so I decided that it was something he never needed to know.

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