All of the clothes were pretty. Pink lace trims. Cream faux-fur shrugs. White ruffled shirts. It was a risk to buy a dress for Rosie without her with me.

Nevertheless, I had decided that it was worth it to see the enchantment and surprise on her face when I presented it to her in a smart bag with ribbon and tissue paper. And it would be just in time for Charlotte’s birthday party at the weekend. More than anything, I hungered to get rid of the unpleasant aftertaste of our row, to paper over the memory of our disorderly tussle. The skin across my whole body flushed as I thought of her rolling around on the floor holding her wrist.

I picked up the pink patent slip-ons. The shop assistant’s ironed blonde hair flicked onto the leather of my handbag as she bent down to straighten the rows I had disrupted.

The minutes were ticking away. I had an hour before I was due back at work to meet my managing director for ‘a little chat’. I was nervous about the meeting and flustered with indecision about the dress.

‘They are our bestsellers,’ the shop assistant said, pushing her tortoise-shell glasses onto her head.

The boutique was too quiet, exclusive, uncomfortably so. I was ready to bolt.

‘Very lovely,’ I replied politely.

A little girl’s dream, surely. My mother had forced me to wear brown buckle-ups until I was twelve. Whenever Rosie had wanted patent leather shoes or slip-ons, I, too, had always said no. This time I would get her what she wanted. Was pink too babyish? Had she grown out of pink? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure I knew what she liked. Although I pushed that thought aside.

In the baby section, I spotted an adorable stripy Babygro. My hand moved under my coat, to touch, to connect with that tiny six-week-old embryo. I imagined folding new Babygros into the drawers in the spare bedroom, which I would transform into a nursery, with fresh paint and soft rugs. I would reassemble the wooden cot I had used for Rosie and Noah and position it by the window with a view of the apple tree. I wanted to take care to tie the white waffle cot protector to the bars with proper little bows and position a colourful mobile above the changing table. My nesting instincts usually hit me towards the end of my pregnancies, but maybe I would give myself more time to fix the room up this time round.

I refolded the soft Babygro. This was about Rosie, not the baby.

My fingers danced across the dresses on the rail, and stopped at a blue polka-dot dress with a drop waist. I pulled it out, trying to imagine Rosie wearing it. She would look beautiful in anything I bought. I tried to think about what she would like. Did she like blue? What was her favourite colour? How awful that I didn’t know. I cringed, layering the guilt.

My dithering was bothering me. At work, I was considered focussed and purposeful. I was trained to coolly assess corporate lawyers for the firm, grill them and charm them; analyse them with rigorous psychometric testing, run workshops and make notes on their behaviour. I was employed to recruit dependable workaholic sociopaths to head departments and make the corporate world go round. But I was flummoxed by the task of choosing a dress for my own daughter.

The shop assistant was refolding the Babygro I had just folded. I needed her help. ‘Excuse me. I think I do need some help actually. I’m looking for a party dress for my ten-year-old.’

‘Of course, madam. What is her colouring?’

‘She has beautiful long black hair,’ I smiled, warmed by the vision of her. ‘And she has lovely pale skin. And big blue eyes.’

The shop assistant’s head was cocked to the side. ‘She sounds beautiful.’

‘She is.’ I was slightly embarrassed. All mothers thought their children were beautiful. This woman must have heard it a thousand times before.

‘And what’s she like?’

‘Ummm, well,’ I began. The question panicked me. ‘She likes to be the boss,’ I laughed.

‘Okay, so she’s quite sophisticated then.’

She walked straight over to a navy-blue dress that was hanging near the shop window. It had one long silk sleeve and the other was shoulder-less.

‘It’s very elegant...’ I began.

‘It was featured in Teen Vogue last month.’

‘I’d wear it. But I think it might be a little too sophisticated for her.’

‘They grow up too fast these days, don’t they?’

‘Yes, they do,’ I agreed with a tingle of dread as I imagined Rosie as a teenager.

‘What about this one?’

It was more like a sundress, with a white sweetheart bodice, detachable spaghetti straps and little daisies dotted across the skirt. It was the kind of dress I would have dreamed of wearing as a child. I took it from the shop assistant, felt the crisp cotton and noticed the yellow gauze that filled out the underskirt.

‘Perfect. The yellow will look lovely with her dark hair. Have you got any shoes that might go with it?’

The woman helped me choose some silver slip-ons, and also persuaded me to buy a matching bag, white socks and even a children’s perfume that smelt sickly like sweets. With the receipt, she added a packet of Love Hearts into the bag, which I removed as soon as I left the shop.

As I raced back to the office, I felt lighter, wishing I could go home early to give it to her now. Two fingers to you, Mira Entwistle, and to all your nasty judgements. How dare she check on us like that? She knew nothing about Rosie and me.

When I walked back into the office, swinging the pale grey shopping bag, my assistant gasped. ‘I love Coco’s. I bought my niece a little scarf in there once.’

I resisted the urge to unpick the sticker on the tissue paper to show her.

Lisa had impeccable taste. She wore black pencil skirts and silk blouses and very high heels, like a secretary in American romantic comedies. I had always felt rather plain next to her in meetings. My hair was cut well, but it never shone like hers, and my skinny legs got lost in my unfashionable suits. I resolved to make the time someday to take notes on where she bought her make-up and clothes so that I could refresh my tired, conservative wardrobe and buy some face creams or foundations that weren’t supermarket brand for a change.

‘I must be paying you too much, Lisa.’ I winked at her.

‘I wish,’ Lisa retorted, leaping up and following me into my glass office.

She reeled off a list of all the people who had called while I was out and stuck the Post-its on my desk next to the various aphorisms I had written on a cluster of neon pink Post-it notes:

Live life to the fullest!

---

If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will!

---

Carpe diem!

---

It always seems impossible until it’s done!

---

Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough!

and so on.

‘Have you managed to find out what this “little chat” with Richard is all about?’

‘No,’ Lisa shrugged, and avoided eye contact.

‘Lisa?’

‘Don’t know a thing, honest.’ A crinkle arrived on her flawless young forehead. ‘Richard said two o’clock remember,’ she added, swivelling away to tap at her keyboard.

It was obvious that Lisa was holding something back. She and Richard’s secretary, Becky, were close friends, and wickedly indiscreet with each other.

‘You’re making me nervous,’ I said, pulling on my suit jacket, feeling the heat in the room suddenly, wondering whether it had been wise to spend all that money on Rosie. Redundancies were a daily occurrence these days.

‘Please don’t be late for him, will you?’ Lisa urged, waving me away with one hand.

Richard’s office was five floors up on floor twenty-five.

Floor twenty-five was very different to floor twenty.

The vast room was open-plan with rows of desks where the bankers sat in front of their huge screens, scrutinising indecipherable columns of numbers and talking heatedly into headphone receivers.

I recognised some of the men I had employed for the company: Matthew Willoughby – 32, First from Bristol, requested a salary way past his pay-grade, scored four out of five on the performance grades, letting himself down on ‘openness’; Jonathan Pressfield – 29, worked the trading floor from sixteen years old, just made redundant, two children to feed, three out of five, hence the redundancy. He wasn’t ruthless enough. I liked him. He made the team a happier place, which was why I had originally hired him, against Richard’s advice. I made a note to pass by his desk after this meeting to see how he was getting on.

Becky was not at her desk to act as gatekeeper to Richard, so I tried to lurk in plain view. Through his open door – the only door on the whole floor – he beckoned me in while still holding the phone to one ear. My throat felt tight and I wondered if any sound would come out when I said hello.

Did he look shifty? Did he look like a man who was about to sack me?

His hair was tamed into black, smooth waves across his skull. His cheeks looked buffed, as though he’d been given a rigorous face scrub from his mum, or his wife, who were probably interchangeable.

Richard wouldn’t look shifty if he was about to shoot me in the head.

He hung up. ‘Sorry about that. Hello Gemma, please, sit,’ he smiled, beckoning me over to the Chesterfield sofa, incongruous within the modern glass office.

I sat at the other end and crossed my legs, and then uncrossed them. The leather creaked.

‘So, how are the kids?’

‘Great, yes.’ I nodded, thinking ‘get the fuck to the point!’

‘Noah still playing tennis?’

To uphold good relations, Richard always held one key personal fact about his employees to trot out at appropriate moments.

‘His serves are better than mine,’ I replied.

‘Good lad! Right, well, let’s get to the point, shall we?’

Another nod was all I could manage.

He continued. ‘You’ve probably heard the rumours that Cathy is leaving us?’

My palms tingled. ‘Yes?’

‘We wondered,’ he began, jiggling his leather brogue in my direction, ‘if you would consider filling her shoes?’

His smile had hit his eyes now. A rush of pride overshadowed any of the practical considerations about my undeclared pregnancy and I sat up poker-straight, as though called to attention. Cathy Knowles was Head of Recruitment across Europe. It was a significant promotion. My salary would leap.

‘I would be delighted to,’ I answered firmly, trying to sound measured.

He clapped his hands. ‘That’s great news. Now, I can’t talk salaries or contracts yet, we’ll have to go through the proper channels, as you well know. We’ll be going ahead with the boring bloody process of advertising and interviewing externally, but I wanted to reassure you that, in my book, it’s just a formality. We don’t want to lose you to some headhunter while we fanny around with protocol, now, do we?’

‘No fannying around,’ I grinned. ‘Thank you very much for the opportunity. I’m really looking forward to the challenge.’ I was eager. My head spun. Although I knew the job wasn’t quite mine until contracts were signed, I couldn’t wait to tell Peter.

---

On the train back home, I thought practically about what a promotion would entail. I hadn’t been honest with Richard about the baby. I had been swept up in the moment, desperate to enjoy the accolade. The promotion was flattering. No, it was more than that, it was what I had worked fifteen years towards. But if he knew I was pregnant, I doubted he would want to ‘fanny around’ finding maternity cover for me. I had six weeks to declare it before the three-month mark. I had to work out what this new job would mean for the baby, for the family, for me.

It meant longer hours. It meant working weekends. It meant regular trips abroad. It meant much more stress. And it meant even less time with the children. This baby would be my third child to experience nannies when very young.

I didn’t know how to consolidate the two parts of me. The desire to make time for a pretty nursery clashed with my career ambitions. But hadn’t I been managing the balance of home life and work life relatively well so far? Tiredness and stress were facts of everybody’s life these days, weren’t they? Maybe I could ask to work from home one day a week. Delegate some of the trips abroad? Rosie would be taking her eleven-plus next year. She would grow out of her tantrums, surely, and she would be taking herself off to school on a bus or train, or she might even board.

I stopped. I was getting ahead of myself. Once Richard found out about the baby, he might change his mind. Either way, it would be months before I was officially offered the role. Some upstart from another firm might interview so well they wouldn’t be able to resist them. There was time to think about it, to work out the logistics, to talk to Peter about it. The train carriage shot through a tunnel and I shut down my ruminations, cutting them off like the tunnel had cut my view beyond the window.

---

I climbed the hill home without the usual dread. The paper-light dress had an invisible glow of love and contrition.

I checked the time. A quarter to eight, much later than usual due to the quarterly budget meeting. Harriet, the nanny, would be telling the children to brush their teeth and get into bed ready for story-time with Mummy.

‘Helloooo-ooh!’ I called up the stairs.

Noah came rushing at me, full of chatter.

Rosie was at the top of the stairs with a toothbrush in her mouth and her hip cocked to the side. ‘Hi Mum,’ she mumbled.

‘Don’t drop toothpaste on the carpet, Rosie!’ I cried, immediately wanting to push the words back into my mouth and replace them with, ‘Hello, darling! How was your day?’

‘Hi,’ Harriet said, sauntering out of Noah’s room, folding one of his school jumpers. Her wide hips were swaying, and her full, permanently dry lips were humming. She was a rare combination of efficiency and calm. The children never ruffled her, or certainly never in front of me. Her voice remained at a level pitch, always. I envied her for it. Her bright red hair was a wonder to Noah, and he would twirl it in his fingers when she cuddled him. I hated watching it. He never did that to me. There were times when I wished she would get pregnant with her good-for-nothing boyfriend, and leave us to find someone they weren’t so attached to. But then, of course, I feared it more than wanted it.

‘How’ve they been?’

Before she answered, she followed me down the stairs and sat down next to a basket of clean clothes, folding as she spoke.

‘All good. We had a run around on the rec for an hour after school and we saw Charlotte there,’ Harriet said, wrinkling her nose.

‘Rosie’s going to her birthday party this weekend.’

‘She’s very rude.’

I looked at my watch, replying distractedly. ‘Hmmm, yes, her mum spoils her I think... You can pop off a little early if you like?’

Usually I would ask Harriet to detail everything both Rosie and Noah had said, done and eaten. But tonight, I was impatient with her to leave so that I could give Rosie her present.

Harriet dutifully disappeared after saying goodbye to Rosie and Noah.

And I carried the dress up the stairs.

First, I said goodnight to Noah. Then I peered around Rosie’s door. She was reading quietly in bed, just as she had been asked to do. I had the urge to drag Mira Entwistle from her horrible green kitchen and show her how contented Rosie could be. Maybe I should fling the window wide open so that Mira could eavesdrop on Rosie’s giggles when she sees her new party dress.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ I said, coming in. Her face lit up.

I sat on her bed and handed her the bag. ‘It’s for Charlotte’s party.’

‘Oh!’ she cried, squeezing her cheeks together in excitement, staring at the bag.

‘Go on, open it.’

Laying the tissue paper package on the bed, she knelt down to open it.

I watched every tiny twitch on her face as she unfolded the sundress. She looked at it and didn’t say a word. Was she simply speechless and overwhelmed?

‘It’s lovely,’ she said, and folded it back into the tissue paper.

‘Don’t you want to try it on?’

‘I’ll try it on tomorrow,’ she said.

My heart wanted to break.

‘Don’t you like it, sweetheart?’

‘It’s lovely, Mummy, I love it,’ she said, reaching her arms around me for a polite hug. ‘Thank you so much.’ She then moved her hand over my pregnant belly. ‘When is it going to kick, Mummy?’

‘Not for another couple of months probably.’

Sometimes, it was easier to think about the baby in the abstract, as an unformed embryo, but when I imagined its legs and arms kicking, a flutter of panic danced through my chest. This baby was going to be real. It was going to need much more than a few designer Babygros and a pretty cot. We would be a family of five. Peter and I would be outnumbered. Why, again, had we thought we could handle another one?

‘Did I kick a lot?’

‘You kicked so much I am still black and blue inside,’ I laughed.

She giggled. She loved hearing about being inside me, and about her birth. Her wonder reminded me of the miracle and privilege of being pregnant. We would handle the next one, just as we handled the other two. We would be okay. Third babies always slotted into the established family unit just fine. It was going to be fine.

‘There are some other bits and bobs in the bag,’ I said, hopefully.

She looked into the bag gingerly. When she brought out the silver slip-ons, bag and perfume, she seemed genuinely enthralled.

‘Look!’ she cried, hanging the bag over her pyjamas and slipping into her shoes. She paraded around in them pretending to be a fashion model. How I wished I had bought the blue dress. The yellow dress seemed babyish to me now that I saw Rosie in front of me, at ten years old, so tall, and only a few years away from puberty. I’d got it wrong. I had got her wrong.

I read the words of her bedtime book without engaging with them. I couldn’t shift the disappointment.

‘I’m sorry you don’t like the dress,’ I said when I kissed her goodnight.

‘I love it, Mummy, I really, really do!’ she said.

I wanted to believe her. ‘You’ll wear it to Charlotte’s party then?’

There was a pause as she snuggled down with her bear.

‘It’s a bowling party Mummy,’ she said, almost in a whisper.

The baby seemed to flip inside my belly, sending waves of sickness through me. A bowling party? Why the hell hadn’t I known?

‘Oh. No. Sorry,’ I said, unable to offer more. I was mortified.

‘It’s okay, Mummy,’ she said and she stroked my hand.

A ten-year-old, trying to reassure her mother. It was pitiful. And there, Mira seemed to be in the room with us again, watching me fail, and sneering at me for being utterly useless.