I pressed my hand into the small of my back and walked the five paces or so that measured the length of the room. Then I turned and went back, feeling the weight bear down on my knees. One step too many and they’d snap, I thought. Down I would fall.

More contractions sent shocks through my body.

I would have given much to be sitting up in my tree with a bottle of bright fizzy drink, surveying my domain and practising swearing.

What if I rang up Will and said, ‘I’m handing over to you. You do this, not me?’

A phone call to the House elicited the information that Will had left half an hour previously and had not left a contact number. I tried his bleeper but it was switched off.

I rang Elaine, who came straight to the point: ‘Husbands do this. Mine’s probably with yours. Would you like me to come to the hospital?’

I thought this over. Friendship was sweet but no substitute for Will. I thanked her and asked, ‘Could you ring my father? Tell him I’m on my way to hospital.’

From then on I don’t remember the fine detail, only the general picture, for which I am grateful. The midwife said that was because it happened so fast, which was unusual for a first baby. I do have one fixed image in my memory, of hovering above a large, thrashing, sweating figure, who, with a shock, I recognized as myself. The room was licked by shadows, lit only by a dim light. A midwife merged in and out of it. Sometimes she spoke to me. Sometimes I answered.

Soon I changed my mind about wishing to be alone. I wanted someone to hold my hand and pull me back from the person on the delivery bed. I craved the touch of someone who loved me, and wept for my pain and Will’s absence.

‘Look who’s here…’ The midwife appeared by the bedside and, wild-eyed, I reared up expecting to see the tall, fair-haired figure of my husband.

‘Hey,’ said Meg. ‘Your father rang.’ She was wrapped in a black jumper that was too big for her and, despite the heat in the room, shivering. Traces of whisky hung on her breath.

I fought the impulse to turn away my face. ‘Isn’t Will coming?’

‘He’s on his way,’ she said, and picked up my hand. ‘I think.’ Her cold touch was like a burn, and I wished her anywhere but there.

Then things began to happen. Meg stood beside the bed, wiped my face and informed me I was doing fine, and it was Meg who, other than the midwife, was the first person to see Chloë.

She was born at twenty-five to twelve, without the aid of drugs. ‘What a good girl,’ said the midwife. ‘What a brave, good girl. So much better for Baby if Mummy does it all herself.’

She placed Chloë on my stomach, a still pale and muted ammonite. Until that moment, I had been preoccupied with the heroic and peculiar physical achievements of my body. Now there was a moment of hush, of expectation. I looked down. How extraordinary, I thought. This is what a forced nine-month occupation of my body and an undignified battle on a delivery bed results in. Then Chloë turned her face in my direction and screwed up her eyes.

Her hand reached into the air as if she was grasping for her life. That tiny hand unleashed an invisible silken cord, looped it into a cunning lasso, aimed it towards my heart and, with one flex of those shrimpy pink fingers, secured it.

‘She’s perfect,’ Meg leant over to inspect her, and there was a yearning note in her voice. ‘I think I should be godmother, don’t you?’

She left when Will burst into the room a short while later. ‘I’m so sorry, so very sorry.’ Unsure of whether or not to touch me, he hovered by the bed. ‘I’ll never ever do that again. I’ll never not check.’

‘Your daughter’s over there, Will.’

He took a chance and slid his arm round my shoulders and kissed me. He was very, very disappointed and furious with himself. ‘It was a late sitting. Regulations about child labour in East and British manufacturers. I don’t blame you if you are angry.’

‘Not angry… empty.’

‘I switched off the bleeper, forgot, and went off for a quick supper at Brazzi’s. I’ve missed out, haven’t I?’

His guilt was almost comic, but it was sad too. For he had missed out – on that special, perfect moment when Chloë tumbled into the world.

The backwash of exhaustion, discomfort and spent hormones was draining my strength. ‘Go and look at your beautiful daughter. Then please ring Dad… and my mother. I promised her that you would.’

‘I hope you forgive me?’

Of course I did. Chloë was here, well and safe and, set against that, there was nothing to forgive.


*

We moved into the new house in Stanwinton when Chloë was two weeks old. I had been reluctant to stir from the safety of the flat but Will had insisted we observe the agreed timetable. ‘We can manage,’ he said, when I produced excuses about feeding and crying and nappy-changing, all of which still appeared in the light of a complex mathematical theory. ‘It is the right thing to do to take our new daughter to our new house.’

Still sore and battered, I struggled to do my best and Will, still repentant for his non-showing at her birth, tried to make up for it by packing, ferrying and driving. I was not to do anything. This seemed reasonable for I did not wish to do anything.

‘I don’t want to get up, cook, wash clothes, even think.’ Since the birth, my voice had sounded different even to me. I put it down to hoarseness from my cries but I almost believed it was because I was changing so profoundly.

Will took this type of comment touchingly seriously. ‘It’s normal to feel down after a baby.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I read about it in the books.’ I did not bother to respond to that, and he pressed on: ‘You’ll feel better once you’re settled in the house. I’ll be back every Friday.’

I almost felt sorry for him, so desperate was he to make things right.

The fields were bristling with stubble as our heavily laden car nosed between them, and the leaves on the beeches swayed in the breeze. From the back of the car where I sat with Chloë, I looked out on the fields. Like them or not, they were going to be companion presences.

Mannochie was waiting at the front door. The professional smile deepened into the genuine article as he helped me out of the car. ‘Welcome to you all,’ he said, in a quaintly formal way. On cue, Chloë woke up and began to cry. ‘May I?’ asked Mannochie, and picked her up. Would you know? Chloë stopped crying.

‘I didn’t know you were good with babies, Mannochie.’

‘She’s lovely.’ Mannochie was rocking Chloë in a way she liked.

Will peered over his shoulder. ‘She is, isn’t she?’

I left them to it and stepped over the threshold. The men had been hard at work on the house for the last few weeks, and it had been decorated, with cheap job lots from a DIY store, and carpets had been laid.

The freshly varnished banisters felt a little sticky under my hand as I went upstairs and the virgin carpet was slippery underfoot. The first thing I did in our bedroom was tug open the window and allow the fresh air to dilute the fug of fresh paint.

My body ached and my mind was as dull and spongy as batter that had been allowed to stand overlong. Except when I looked at Chloë, I felt cold and distanced, without life and energy.

Somewhere, far away, a baby was crying. Resentment flickered: I had lost what I now saw as the privilege of being alone.

Mannochie padded upstairs. ‘Chloë’s crying.’

I did not move. ‘I know’

He tried again. ‘She seems hungry.’

I knew I should close the window and go downstairs. But I wanted to remain at my vantage-point, observe the rooks wheeling above their eyries and the gun-metal sky.

Mannochie touched my arm. A non-threatening, polite gesture. ‘Fanny, have you seen the doctor lately?’

Tears ran down beside my mouth. I had lost something. My tree-house and the freedom I had known up in the branches were in another country, far, far away. Without a doubt, I would grow older – and old – and never again go there.

My tears were also fearful: I was frightened I would be unable to perform in my roles, that I could not cope, let alone soar to the heights of managing house and baby brilliantly.

I put out my tongue and tasted salt. ‘Why would I need a doctor?’

‘Fanny!’ Will appeared in the doorway with a screaming Chloë.

Reluctantly, I turned. ‘Give her to me.’

He thrust her into my arms and peered at me. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine,’ I said.

The men returned downstairs, and while they brought in the luggage I sat down with Chloë and fed her. Enchanted, enraptured and angry, I watched the busy little button mouth, the little veins in the almost transparent eyelids. ‘You’re a greedy minx,’ I informed her.

Chloë took no notice. After she had finished, her head fell back and she slept. Gradually, the jangle of feelings inside me subsided.

Will came up with a cup of tea and watched us fondly. His presence was calming and, suddenly, I felt almost peaceful and happy.

‘Here,’ he said, and settled me against his shoulder, and took Chloë on to his lap. ‘Just sit for a while. There’s no hurry.

‘I love you both very much,’ he added.

‘OK, ready,’ called the photographer from the Stanwinton Echo. The camera flashed. ‘Again,’ he commanded.

I tried to hide my still bulky stomach behind Will.

‘Smile and look to the left.’

The experience was not as bad as I had feared. It fact it was fun to be the focus of attention and, at any other time, I might have taken to it.

‘Could we have the baby now, please?’

The one thing that Will and I agreed on absolutely was to stick to the principle of keeping Chloë out of photographs and publicity. Yet, here we were, with Chloë only a month old, in the town hall at a press conference. It was, we agreed, a minor emergency.