Premature

I didn’t exactly sprint down the hill - it wasn’t my style – and as well as the residue of self-protection was the painfully recent remembrance of the hard-eyed Malayan, her scalpel blade flashing and tweezers snatching around my most tender areas. A midday of blue and eye-screwed brightness, birdsong and a well-washed denim dress, smiling shoppers toiling bags towards me, returning from the town. I smiled too, full to the brim with joy: blissfully lacking anticipation of the crushing sense of responsibility which would later overwhelm us.

He wouldn’t be expecting me: he’d dropped me off before eight that morning and planned to pick me up after six, a third successive Saturday we’d spent apart. Hearing me rattle open the door, he came to the top of the stairs, paintbrush in hand, enquiring and concerned. I, a bit breathless: “They weighed her – they said her weight’s OK – we can fetch her now – we can bring Julia Kate home!”