Matt was working a late shift on Sunday and left straight after lunch. I pottered around the house, stacking the dishwasher and putting a wash on. I made your bed and arranged your toys along the bottom. A few more hours and you’d be home again. Then I picked up the photographer’s address and set off.

The bell jingled when I pushed the shop door open. The girl behind the counter didn’t lift her head. She bent forward over a magazine, her nails painted vivid pink. Her hair was long and swept up in a ponytail, tied with a green ribbon.

The interior was shadowy after the bright sunshine of the street. I made a show of looking at the frames: wood, plastic, metal, multi-frames, singles.

I crossed to the display wall towards the back. Portraits by Stella. She offered several styles. Young children playing, dressed up as pirates or princesses. They laughed, open-mouthed and joyful as only a small child can be, looking up and slightly to one side, their attention caught by someone or something offstage. I wondered how many shots it took to get those perfect photographs and thought with a pang how gorgeous you’d look.

Others were more formal, portraits of families sitting together in posed groups, children with slightly strained faces, in the protective hoop of their parents’ arms.

The final section was artistic. The face of a girl, about your age, on the far side of a bubble, just before it burst. A boy, a chubby toddler in a sailor suit, reaching for a falling balloon. It was hard to believe the images weren’t faked.

‘Can I help you?’ The girl, finally. She spoke without moving.

‘I’ve come to see Stella. Jen Walker.’

She blinked. ‘Have you got an appointment?’

‘I called yesterday. You told me to come around three.’

She frowned. ‘You didn’t speak to me.’

‘Well, whoever it was, that’s what they said. Is she in?’

She sighed, heaved herself down from her stool and padded to the back. Her heels echoed on the wooden floor as they clattered through.

Stella was about fifty, with long, unashamedly greying hair and no make-up. She strode out in baggy trousers, flat shoes and a loose, blouson top. Her eyes were quick and her handshake firm.

‘You wanted to see me?’

‘I was thinking of arranging a photo shoot as a present for a friend,’ I said. ‘Could I ask you about it?’

The back room had the feel of an artist’s gallery. The walls were exposed London brick, the woodwork painted a brilliant white. The ceiling gave way to a long, strutted skylight down the centre, which flooded the whole area with light. Around the walls, individual framed pictures were picked out by spotlights on tracks.

Against one wall hung a screen: the pull-down, rolling type, which offered different coloured backgrounds. Next to it, there was a large wicker basket that overflowed with props and children’s costumes.

‘May I have a look round?’

‘Feel free.’ She settled at a long desk in one corner of the room, covered with mounts and prints, and bent over her work.

I walked round, past the wedding portraits, the family shots. They were standard colour prints, not the old-fashioned sepia of Ella’s pictures. I hesitated, wondering if I’d got the right place. Perhaps it had kept the name but changed hands.

After a few minutes, I sensed her watching me and turned. She got to her feet and came to join me, handed me a brochure and price list.

‘Was there something in particular?’

‘My friend’s having her first baby next month,’ I said. ‘I wanted something special for her. You did some striking pictures for another friend of ours, a few years ago. Of her newborn.’ I hesitated, pretended to think about it. ‘Well, seven or eight years ago, actually.’

She looked at me more closely. ‘I don’t really do newborns.’

‘Really?’ I opened the brochure, looked down the prices. They started at three figures. ‘I’m sure she said Stella. They were such lovely shots. The baby only looks a few hours old. There’s one of her in her mother’s arms and another of their hands together, the baby’s little fist curled round her mother’s finger, you know? They were really evocative.’

She didn’t speak for a moment. She just stood there, staring at me with an odd expression on her face. I turned away and studied the price list, feeling my face flush. I always was a terrible liar.

‘Your friend, the one who’s expecting a baby,’ she said at last, ‘is everything alright?’

‘Yes, well, I think so.’ I faltered.

Her face became stern. ‘Are you a lawyer?’

‘A lawyer?’ I blinked. ‘No.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I get them, sometimes. I don’t want any part in all that. Good luck to people, if that’s what they need to do. Personally, I don’t think it helps.’

She stood for a moment, looking me over, then seemed to come to a decision. She crossed to a shelf and ran her finger along a bank of large albums there before lifting one down. It was ivory and tied with cream ribbon. She opened it on her desk, gestured me across to join her as she started to turn the pages.

‘I don’t put these out,’ she said. ‘Are these the ones you mean?’

I recognised the style at once from the pictures hidden away at the back of Ella’s drawer. They all had the same timeless sepia tint, the same stillness in the features. Tiny babies, some of them impossibly small and fragile, some with blue veins bulging at their temples through marble skin, some wrapped round in fluffy white towels, other dressed in baby grows and bonnets, all with their eyes screwed closed.

‘I don’t charge for these,’ she said. ‘But I only take referrals from the hospital. The midwives know me.’

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t understand.

‘I went through it myself, you see, years ago,’ she went on. ‘There was nothing available then but a lot of people find it helps. It gives them something to remember. Otherwise, the whole experience, well, it can seem very unreal afterwards.’

She glanced at me. My eyes moved again to the photographs. Slowly she turned the pages, showing me family after family. I started to see the dreadful sameness in the pictures. How still the babies lay. Not one of them was crying. Not one had its eyes open.

‘Your friend,’ she said. ‘The one whose baby I photographed. You didn’t know her very well, did you?’

I shook my head.

‘How did you see her pictures?’

‘At her mother’s house,’ I stuttered. ‘That’s all. She had them on the wall.’

She narrowed her eyes and looked thoughtful. ‘Did your friend suddenly drop you after the birth? Avoid you? Some women do that, you know. Don’t take it personally. You can’t imagine, until you go through it yourself. The pain of being the only woman on the maternity ward without a baby. Your breasts filling with milk, just as if your baby needed it. And all those well-meaning people, people who haven’t heard, phoning you, texting, asking if it’s a boy or a girl, wanting names, weights, pictures.’ She closed the book. ‘It’s not an easy thing to talk about.’

She put the album back on the shelf. When she turned back, I was still in the same spot. My feet were rooted.

‘Now you know why I don’t do newborns,’ she said, ‘in the normal sense. Plenty of other studios do.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding.’

She turned and escorted me to the door.

At the entrance to the shop, she said: ‘Born sleeping. That’s what I like to say.’ She paused. Again, the curious, appraising look. ‘If you thought your friend’s baby was really alive, well, I must be doing something right.’