My husband looks at us with tears in his eyes. “A healthy little girl,” he says.

I gasp, conscious of my reaction, as if I’m playing a role in a movie. “A girl,” I breathe. The baby makes a thin, helpless sound and wriggles against my skin, her face all swollen and scrunched like a cabbage. She’s purple and covered in rust-red slime, and her head is elongated like an alien’s, but to me she’s the most beautiful thing on earth.

Later, a small crib made of clear plastic appears next to my bed. It sits on top of a metal frame with wheels so that I can push it around the room like a pram. At the bottom end, facing outward, is a rectangular piece of card with a picture of a pink teddy bear and a series of numbers and letters.

AURELIA ELOISE DENNY.

7 LBS 8 OZ.

BORN 16 MAY AT 5:18 A.M.

My room is packed with gifts. Vases of fresh flowers crowd almost every available surface, and pink balloons sway beneath the ceiling on the ends of shiny ribbons.

I trace my daughter’s tiny eyebrows with my finger, sighing with delight as they wriggle apart and then crawl back toward each other like baby caterpillars.

A cup of tea is thrust under my nose, and I shake my head. No, thank you. I don’t want to eat or drink or do anything that involves the use of my hands; they’re far too busy holding this warm little bundle tight against my chest. In fact, I tell my husband, they’ll be busy doing this for the rest of my life. No cups of tea or coffee or anything else, ever again. I never want to let go.

He sighs. He’s angry with me. We had a fight—our first since the birth. Silly, really. A whole lot of fuss over the temperature of the bathwater, the correct way to wash her. It was my fault; I’m not getting enough sleep. I tried to apologize, but it came out wrong.

If only he knew what it was like to be me. Sometimes I wish we could swap bodies so he could feel what I feel.

We curl up under a blanket, just me and her, and I tell our birth story for the seven hundredth time. This is my favorite thing to do now. I uncover an astonishing new detail every time. It’s tricky, though: like recalling a dream. No matter how hard I try to articulate the magic, it sounds flat and commonplace. “Hey, world,” I want to yell out the windows, to the rooftops, to the sky. “Guess what?! I grew a human being inside my own body, a real human with arms and legs and eyelashes and fingernails! For god’s sake, CALL THE PAPERS!” Talk about Wonder Woman.

Even the memory is nebulous, like an echo of a previous life. I remember being in a giant blow-up bath, twisting onto my side and hanging on to the edge, shuddering, convulsing. There was a lot of opening and roaring and ripping and burning, and just so much liquid, and him, always him, with me and next to me and behind me, holding and supporting me and stepping away when I couldn’t bear to be touched and coming back again when I needed him. He dug his thumbs into my lower back for what felt like days on end, never stopping, just pressing and kneading away at the black agony that now seems like a lie. My brain has all but erased the whole thing. If it wasn’t for the stains on the living room rug, I might think it never happened.

I kiss my daughter’s petal-soft lips and smell her milky breath, and I feel a surge of joy so deep, so powerful, that it threatens to burst the walls of my inadequate heart.

My own body hasn’t felt closeness like this for a long time. I’m sure my mother held me like this once, but I don’t recall. I remember holding her, though. I remember cradling her head and stroking her hair—but that doesn’t count because it was right at the end and it didn’t feel nice at all. My arms kept slipping because of all the blood.

No, this is love as I’ve never known it. I am now complete. I am whole.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SCOTT

THE MAN sitting next to Scott was a talker.

It was hit or miss in these places. You either managed to sit quietly with your thoughts and sink a scotch or five in peace, or you wound up next to the kind of misery that loved company. Most of the time these guys were harmless; they didn’t want you to say anything, they just wanted to talk, and if you could tune out and let the words fade into the background, then everyone was happy. But this particular man seemed intent on extracting a conversation if it killed him.

Scott felt vaguely sorry for him: judging from the misogynistic drivel pouring out of his mouth, his wife had just left him, or he’d found her screwing his brother—something like that. But he was unshaven, unkempt, and about eight bourbons deep, all of which spelled the kind of trouble Scott could do without. So he decided to say little, drink a lot, and then make a swift exit.

With the first two objectives firmly under his belt, he was about to put the third into action when the man pointed up at the TV above the bar. “Isn’t that the most depressing shit you’ve ever heard?” he said.

Scott couldn’t imagine that it was, but he lifted his head anyway. There was a news story on, something about a corpse found in a forest. The images were of a muddy riverbank, a taped-off crime scene, and a white van.

“Hey, barman. Turn that up?” the man called. He turned to Scott. “That’s gotta be the fucking worst, am I right?”

The volume increased. Words tumbled from a reporter’s mouth. Tragedy. Community. Dead. Buried. Woods.

“I said, am I right?” the man persevered.

“You’re right,” Scott said, watching the screen. “What happened?”

“Some backpacker. Missing for weeks. They just found her.”

A photograph flashed up of a young woman. Big grin, sandy hair, brown eyes. She was standing on a paved driveway and holding a basketball.

“Imagine getting that call.” The man bowed his head and, to Scott’s horror, began to cry. His big shoulders shook, and wet sounds came out of his mouth.

Scott turned back to the TV screen. The young woman returned his stare.

“Just puts shit into perspective, you know?” said the man through his tears.

Scott watched him from the corner of his eye. Then he dropped a few notes onto the bar and slid off his stool, heading for the daylight.

* * *

Outside, he pulled his phone from his pocket.

Nina answered on the seventh ring. “Not a good time, Scott.”

“Should I call back?” There was a faint crackle of static, but otherwise the line was clear. She must be inside somewhere.

“No, it’s okay. Can’t be long, though. Dinnertime.”

In the background, Scott heard kitchen sounds: a gush of running water and the clank of pans. “How are things going?” he asked.

“Fine.”

There was a long pause. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him, but when had she ever? “Is there a problem?”

“No.”

He sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I know it’s been a while between visits.”

“Five weeks.”

Scott was aware how long it had been. He’d meant to go. He’d booked flights every weekend but always canceled them at the last minute. He’d called countless times, but that was never enough. “Listen,” he said, his throat tight. “I just wanted to say that … well, I saw something on the news.”

The sound of running water stopped. Scott pictured his wife by the sink, soap suds dripping off her hands. Her hair was probably falling in front of her face, as usual. If he was there with her, he would brush it away and tuck it behind her ear.

“What did you see?”

Dead. Buried. Woods. “It’s not important. It just made me think. I could make some changes to my schedule. Spend a bit more time with you. Potentially a week in France every month.”

Nina sighed heavily. “Right. Okay.”

There was a long pause. Scott tipped his head back and looked up at the gray sky. “So, any issues this week?”

“No, not at all. Everything’s going quite well.”

Scott’s mood lifted a little. “That’s great. And Aurelia?”

Another pause. “A little better. Out of bed and in the garden every day this week.”

Scott hesitated. “Every day? Is that a good idea?”

Nina’s silence was loaded.

“Okay, fine. Sorry.” Scott knew that when it came to Aurelia, it was better not to push.

The water started up again. “I have to go.” Nina’s voice was muffled. He guessed she had tucked the phone between her ear and her shoulder to free up both her hands.

“Okay. I’ll leave you to it.”

“See you soon.”

He really should let her go. “Nina?”

There was a faint crackle of static. “Yes?”

“I’ll come next weekend. I promise.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

I love you, he almost said, but the line was already dead.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EMILY

EMILY OPENED her eyes. All around her, shards of light blinked and shifted, and tiny bubbles tickled her skin as they rose toward the surface. Stretching her limbs out like a starfish, she allowed her body to rise with them until she bobbed quietly back into the early evening air.