It was wailing now. Hester brought her face into a smile.

‘Do you want feeding, baby?’ Her voice was an approximation of baby talk. Like she had heard on TV. ‘Do you?’ More wailing. ‘Mummy’s got something for you.’

Mummy. Just the word . . .

She went to the fridge, took out a bottle, placed it in the microwave. She had given him a list of what she wanted and he had got the lot. Powdered milk. Bottles. Nappies. Everything the books said.

She waited for the ping. Took it out.

‘Just right,’ she said, squirting some into her own mouth. She stuck the teat into the baby’s mouth, waited while it sucked hard. ‘That’s it. That’s better . . .’

Yes, it was tiny and pink and shrivelled. Yoda. But unlike Yoda its eyes wouldn’t open all the way, no matter how much Hester pulled at them. That wasn’t important, though. She looked down at the infant. She had wrapped it in blankets because that was the right thing to do, but it still looked cold. Like its skin wasn’t the right colour. But it didn’t matter. Hester had a baby. At last. That was the important thing. And she had to bond. That was important too.

She looked down at it again, feeding, managed a smile. ‘I’ve been through a lot to get you,’ she said, her usually broken voice sounding like a baby coo, ‘a lot. I could have just walked in somewhere, taken you, but that wouldn’t have been right, would it? No . . . Because you’d have been someone else’s by then, wouldn’t you? You’d have a different mummy and you’d have to forget her before you met me.’ She sighed. ‘Yes, I’ve been through a lot. But you were worth it . . .’

The baby spat the teat out, began to cough. Hester felt anger rising inside herself. It wasn’t doing what it was supposed to. It should take all the bottle. The book said. TV said.

‘Don’t you fuckin’ do that,’ she said, no trace now of baby talk. ‘Take it . . .’

She shoved the teat back in the baby’s mouth again, forced it to drink. Pushed the rising anger back down.

The baby stopped coughing, took the teat. That was better.

It was shrivelled and the wrong colour. And it wailed and shat all the time. She hated that. But it was a baby. And that was all she had wanted. So she would put up with it.

‘But you’d better start to be like the TV babies,’ she said to its bare head, ‘the proper babies, or there’ll be trouble . . .’

The baby kicked and wriggled, tried to get away from the bottle.

‘No,’ she said, ‘you need to be big and strong. And you’re not finished until I say you’re finished . . .’

Milk ran down the baby’s cheeks. It had finished feeding. Hester kept the teat in place.

She smiled, looked at her watch. Closed her eyes. It would be time for her husband to go out soon.Yes, she had a baby now but his work wasn’t done. There was still the list to be attended to. Then, when he had finished, he would come back to her and they would all settle in. A real family. Complete. She opened her eyes. Smiled. Content with her life.

For now.

8

‘Fancy a coffee?’ The bright and perky voice was in Marina’s ear once more.

Marina turned. Caroline was standing with some of the other women from the group, heading towards the door.

‘A few of us usually head off into town,’ Caroline said. ‘Go to Life for a coffee. Well, those of us who can still drink it. And usually a little something else.’

‘Doesn’t that undo everything you’ve just done here?’ asked Marina.

Caroline laughed, shrugged. ‘What’s life without a few little treats?’

Marina smiled. ‘That’s kind, thanks, but I have to get back to work.’

Caroline, Marina noticed, was now dressed in the latest in designer and high-end high-street maternity wear. She had also done her make-up in the time it had taken Marina to get showered and dressed. How had she managed that?

Caroline smiled again. ‘You sure?’

And Marina saw something in her features she hadn’t noticed earlier. Tiredness, lines around the eyes. Her smile too brittle. Caroline was older than Marina had first thought, older than her peers in the group. She dressed younger, acted younger, but she couldn’t quite hide the extra years.

‘It would be lovely to have you along.’

Marina returned the smile. ‘Maybe next time.’

‘Okay, then. Next time.’ Caroline turned, went off with her happy, chattering friends, all similarly dressed. They smiled as they passed, and Marina reciprocated, letting it fade once they had all exited.

She watched them go, talking and laughing. They were a group Marina would have instantly categorised, even stereotyped. Middle class, husbands at work, the type of women who would have pain-free births and, by hitting the gym and the fad diets, get their pre-pregnancy figures back within a week. The type of women other women would envy and even secretly despise.

From a distance Caroline looked like she was one of the group, but Marina sensed something different about her. Something separate. Maybe that was why she had wanted Marina to go with them. Or maybe she was just being friendly. No matter. Not her problem. Marina waited until they had all gone, walked through the foyer of Leisure World.

The piped muzak drowned out the shrieks, cries and splashes of schoolchildren cramming in five minutes of play after their prescribed swimming lessons, the multicoloured flume and slide tubes sticking out of the side of the building taking a pounding. She walked through the doors and on to the forecourt. The noise was bad enough but the chlorinated smell was seriously starting to assault her nostrils. She knew things like that happened in pregnancy. The senses were heightened; women became intolerant of scents that had never previously bothered them. She knew one woman from university who couldn’t stand the smell of her own husband. A shiver of dread ran through her body. She hoped nothing like that happened to her.

Outside, she stood on the kerb of the car park on the Avenue of Remembrance, pulled her coat close to her to keep out the November cold, waited for the cab that would take her back to her new office and her afternoon clients. She had showered but her muscles were still aching, throbbing. She would suffer tomorrow.

A few minutes later, a 4x4 went past, tooted. Caroline and her friends. Marina gave a smile that disappeared as the car rounded the corner.

The changes in her life in such a short space of time had been huge. Leaving the comfort and safety of the university to go into private practice - although by the time she left it didn’t feel safe or comfortable - and the fact that Tony, her long-term partner, had proposed to her. But the most important change had been the baby. Unplanned and, initially, unwanted, she was still coming to terms with it. She felt she always would be.

She looked at her watch, getting impatient for the cab, killing time by working out what she would be doing if she were still at the university. Probably preparing for her second-year class, gathering together papers, books and notes in her old office, readying herself for the seminar she would be about to give. Chimerical Masks and Dissociation in the Perception of the Self. Something like that.

The self. Her hands, as they so often did these days, went automatically underneath her coat to her stomach. Began stroking the bump. Slight to a disinterested onlooker’s eyes, but to her enormous. And, she knew, it would only get bigger. This self - her self - was one she barely recognised any more. When she thought of her old life, her old self, she became choked, felt like crying. But she was beyond the tears stage now. Four months beyond.

She felt something flutter. Like butterflies in her stomach. Big butterflies. She jumped, startled and scared. Tried to breathe deeply, calm down. It was natural, it was expected. It was what the body did. But not her body. She didn’t feel it was her body any more. She was just a carrier, a vessel for this child. Which was fine while she was carrying, but when it had left her, what would she be then?