That night, you cried out in your sleep. I stumbled through to you. Your eyes were screwed closed but your face was contorted, your arms flailing.

I sat on the floor by your bed and stroked the hair from your hot face, whispered: ‘It’s alright, Gracie. Mummy’s here.’

Wherever you were, lost in some dream, I couldn’t reach you there. What business did a girl have with nightmares when she wasn’t yet four years old? After a few minutes, when you still didn’t settle, I sat you up. You reached out, still half-asleep, arms wide, to be lifted and I carried you through, your bear pressed between our chests, to my room. You lay in the middle of the bed, your compact body kicking and elbowing me as you made the space your own.

You opened your eyes, looked round at the shadows and smiled, pleased.

‘Mummy and Daddy’s bed.’

Just Mummy’s bed now. I stroked your hair and you curled yourself round your bear, your head on his back, and dropped again into sleep.

I looped an arm round your firm body and put my face against your neck. Your hair was soft and fine and smelt fresh. You should always sleep here with me. Why did you have your own bed now, anyway? What did it matter? I lay quietly in the darkness, listening to your slow, soft breathing beside me, feeling your warmth.

We argued about this too, Richard and I, when you were a baby. One of many arguments. I never thought, when I was pregnant with you, so full of joy, of hope, hands protective on my swollen stomach, relishing the sight of it, everything an expectant mother is supposed to be, that he’d have so many dogmatic opinions about childcare. I thought he’d leave all that to me; wasn’t that what men were supposed to do? But he was a passionate father, determined to do everything right and someone else filled him with ideas, I was sure of it. Ella, perhaps. She was in the background all along; I know that now.

I reached out and stroked your cheek with my fingertips, wondering if you could sense me, even through sleep. He was fiercely opposed to ‘co-sleeping’, as he called it. He said it was dangerous; we might smother you. We needed to set boundaries.

He wasn’t the one breastfeeding every few hours. After you fed, you fell asleep against me, cuddled in the crook of my arm, your face against my warm skin, listening to my heartbeat. What could be more natural? It was the comfort and warmth all animals needed.

He ended up sleeping in the spare bedroom and moved his clothes into the wardrobe there so he could creep out to work early without disturbing us. I was glad. It put an end to the argument. There was no one to sigh and raise himself on an elbow and grimace when I brought you into bed to feed and kept you there. Was that very wrong? I went over and over it afterwards, once it was all too late and he’d left and news broke of the wonderful Ella, glamorous, amazing Ella with her pert breasts and tight stomach, who wanted him in her bed all night, every night.

You were my daughter. Of course I was besotted with you. Of course you were my life. I thought he’d understand that. I thought he’d feel the same.

I was clasping you too tightly. You twisted and bucked in your sleep and kicked away from me to settle again in the empty ocean of the bed. I shifted my weight to move a little closer to you again. I didn’t want to let you go. I wanted to feel the heat rising from your body through the Dalmatian pyjamas you loved so much.

I lifted a finger and ran it gently over your hair. Ella, you said, screaming down the phone, just when she most needed her mind on the road. The thought of it, of your anxiety as you listened from the back seat, made me physically sick. I should have been there. I should have protected you.

I closed my eyes. An image swam up of your tiny pale body, stretched out on the hospital bed, pierced by tubes and needles. I sat up, shook it out of my head and looked down at you now, sleeping beside me, your eyelids flickering as you dreamed.