I carried a baby for my twin brother and when he looked at her back he handed her to me and said, “I’m not taking her home.”

When the scan said girl, they lost their minds.

The nursery was pink by the November. There were dresses in a drawer in the December for a child who would not fit them until the following autumn.

Lorna bought a cardigan in the January and rang me to describe it for eleven minutes.

Marnie was born on the twenty-ninth of May at twenty past four in the afternoon.

Danny and Lorna were in the corridor and they came in about twenty minutes later.