One of them took hold of my little finger with her entire hand, and from that second onwards there was nothing else anywhere in the world.

The first one came in a white blanket with a thin stripe on it.

I had thought I knew what this would be.

I had rehearsed it for ten years, on bathroom floors and in waiting rooms and in a car park in the second year, and I had got it completely wrong in a way I had not anticipated.

What I had always imagined was a flood of love.