He took over the paperwork for the first time in our marriage and he did it in a ring binder with tabs, and the tabs were in his handwriting, and one of them said BAG.

Towards the end of it all I was booked in for a caesarean.

There were reasons.

There were always reasons by then — two of them, lying the wrong way round, and a number on a chart that the consultant did not love — and by that stage of a ten-year project you stop arguing with the plan and simply ask what date.

The date was a Thursday.