George is a delightful child. He’s smiley and even-tempered. He doesn’t cry much, except for when he’s hungry or needs his nappy changing, and he sleeps like a dream – for hours on end without waking – and even then, when he wakes, he’s usually in a good mood, making contented gurgling noises and cooing.

She watches him in his cot as he stirs himself awake, pulling his knees up to his chest and grabbing hold of his tiny toes. His face is a library of expressions as though he’s testing out every muscle. She dresses him beautifully; he has a wardrobe stuffed with exquisite designer outfits, stripy Petit Bateau rompers and matching Ralph Lauren two-pieces, corduroy shorts and miniature shirts, dungarees and tiny leather jackets, soft pram shoes and Converse chucks, and Gucci loafers for special occasions. Nothing but the best and finest for George.

He’s taken to her like most men do – easily, though perhaps, even she admits, that this is more to do with George’s sunny disposition than anything else. He loves being cuddled and held, tickled and attended to, yet he’s also quite happy being left on his little mat to play independently, kicking his legs and rolling over onto his belly, something he’s only just started to do, she’s noticed. Watching George is her new favourite pastime. Every day there’s something new to marvel at: a noise, a movement, a facial expression, a milestone. His selfish bitch of a mother couldn’t seem to care less. She goes out to ‘work’ so she says, but secretly Rachel believes she’s off shopping, drinking, at the gym, socialising with friends and attending to her myriad beauty needs. She doesn’t seem the slightest bit interested in little George and his progress; she’s too busy preening, getting herself in shape so she can snare herself another rich business man to rinse dry and pretend to love while she impresses the neighbours.

There’s something so fickle about babies she thinks as she picks up his warm, strong little body and pulls him into her, as long as they’re getting what they want they’re happy. ‘Shall we have breakfast, George?’ she asks him, examining his fluffy head, his tiny ears and perfectly shaped nose, a real button of a nose. ‘Some pureed pear perhaps, you like that don’t you? Not too tart.’ George gurgles and coos, making little high-pitched sounds of what she thinks are appreciation, as if he’s really trying to talk to her. ‘Then we’ll go for a walk in Langley Park, see the swans and the ducks, the duckies, yeah, duckie wuks… quack, quack… We can go on the swings and the slide too, hmm? Yes, good boy,’ she sings to him in babyspeak as she places him back on the mat and begins the process of preparing breakfast, peeling, coring and pureeing the soft pears with care and warming his formula, enjoying the responsibility of her new role. This motherhood business has really given her a new sense of purpose. So much so that she thinks she may even want to do it herself one day, one day soon in fact. Having someone so small and helpless dependent upon you for everything: sustenance, love, cuddles, cleanliness, stimulation. It’s a powerful, omnipotent feeling that she likes. She doesn’t understand why so many women bitch and moan about how difficult it is, how emotionally taxing, draining, exhausting, compromising… They must be just weak and selfish, the lot of them. She has an image then, of George’s mother bending over his tiny graveside, the grief-stricken mother in black, bereft and inconsolable yet somewhere within her a tiny slither of relief lingers. She has her life back.

She thinks about Daniel then. Not so much the man himself but what he’d had the potential to represent to her and the outside world. A hard-working, loving husband and father, solidity, a unit; something she has never been part of or fully understood. All her points of reference have been garnered from listening to others, or from TV, films and books. She tries to really feel these feelings, conjure them up inside of herself, but she simply has no benchmark to go by, just a beautiful fantasy of a reality she isn’t familiar with. Daniel. She’d tried to excite and intrigue him, but it had failed. That he’d snubbed her open invitation to have sex with her had threatened her very existence at a deep core level, although she had ensured he would not know this. Instead, she’d asked him about Rachel, the woman he so obviously deeply loved and missed, a woman who had been cruelly taken from him suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving him broken, damaged and unable to recover. How beautifully he had spoken of Rachel and his love for her, of their love for each other. And with each word she came closer to the truth that no one, no one ever had or would feel the same things about her. She thought of all the times she had given herself to men; hundreds, possibly thousands of times, the feelings she had experienced in those moments, of being desired and special, however fleeting and ephemeral, however transient, they had existed, she had felt them, even with the paying clients. She didn’t mind the rough ones, in fact, she had always felt more at ease with the ones who wanted to debase her, hurt her physically and degrade her, there was comfort in familiarity. Because after the degradation came the love, just like it had with her father. She could still feel him now, bearing down upon her tiny frame, the weight of his protruding stomach on her small pelvis… His power, crushing her, weighing her down. She still felt the sharp pain of him inside her sometimes, and with other men, the well-endowed ones, the pain seamlessly blending into pleasure. Afterwards he would hold her close to him, stroke her hair and arms until she fell asleep against his stomach, cradled in is arms. Daddy Bear. But Daniel had been different somehow, was different. Or perhaps she felt differently with him, a kinship, an understanding of what it was to be broken and bleeding inside. Whatever it was, lying there on that bed together in that quirky little hotel room above the restaurant had made her feel human, hopeful, that perhaps there could be redemption for her after all, at least once all of this was over.

She wondered, as she maneuvered George into his high chair, his legs kicking in all directions, if she would ever have a child of her own. The doctors had told her that it was highly unlikely, that the damage to her insides would prevent it. But there were other ways, IVF, adoption, even surrogacy. There is more than one way to skin a cat. The saying makes her think of Esmerelda and in turn, Kizzy. She wonders if they’ve found her yet. She’d be starting to smell bad by now.

She began to feed George his pear, scooping little blobs of puree into his open mouth like a baby bird in a nest. He liked his food, did George. In fact, George seemed to like just about everything really.

‘There’s a good Baby Bear,’ she said as he swallowed greedily.