I don’t hear Nick come back into the room. I don’t know he is here until he touches my shoulder.

‘Kat.’ He says more than just my name but all I hear is static. I am sobbing so hard I cannot hear. I cannot speak. My head is resting on Lisa’s chest but underneath my ear there is no beating of her heart.

‘Kat,’ Nick says again. This time his hands are under my armpits and he tries to hoist me to my feet, but I grab hold of Lisa’s shirt.

‘Noooo.’ I don’t want to let her go. ‘Please…’

‘Get out the fucking way, Kat,’ Nick shouts. There’s a whimpering to my side and my eyes are drawn to the baby. My baby. His tiny fingers are flexing. His eyes screwed shut. I scoop him into my arms and step to the side.

Nick tilts Lisa’s head back, and despite seeing resuscitation a million times on TV, there is none of the tension I feel when I watch Casualty, none of the drama, just a sad resignation it is too late. But still I watch. Two breaths. Thirty chest compressions. I count them in my head. Two breaths. Thirty chest compressions. I wonder if that is the right number. I wonder if it matters.

‘Fuck.’ Nick sits back on his heels. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’ I am shaking violently with shock. I can’t believe what has just happened.

‘We have to phone an ambulance. They’ll probably call the police.’

‘What about the baby?’ I draw him closer to my chest. He yawns, wide and gummy.

Nick toes the floor with his shoe and looks at anything but me.

‘You think they will take him away?’

‘He’s not ours, Kat. Lisa has a family. They will want him.’

‘He is ours. We had a contract.’ Everything is slipping through my fingers. Grains of sand on the beach. The sandcastles me and Lisa used to build crumbling into nothing as if they were never there. But this baby, he is here: real, solid, and I won’t let him go.

‘The contract isn’t legal. Richard warned us. The baby has to live with us for six weeks before a residency order can be granted. Besides…’

‘Besides, what?’ I try to keep my voice calm as I rock from one foot to another. Gulping back salty tears.

‘He can’t be ours, can he? I don’t know much about babies but, even if he’s early, it’s still too soon, isn’t it?’

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up.’ I hiss out my words. I am not going to think about the way Lisa had clung to my hand as Nick located towels and boiled water, fetched the blanket from the nursery, telling me how miserable she’d been since Jake died. How her mum seemed disappointed she was the one who was alive. How lonely she had been. It had been easy to get drunk in the pub on what would have been her and Jake’s 30th birthday. It had been easy to fall into bed with Aaron at the end of the night, despite the fact they hadn’t spoken for nearly ten years.

‘I didn’t know what to do when I was pregnant,’ she had sobbed. ‘I didn’t plan it. Any of it, I swear. Aaron is married. He doesn’t want his wife finding out. He said it was a mistake and he doesn’t want anything to do with me or the baby.’

‘I thought you’d made the pregnancy up. I thought you were both trying to extort money from me.’

‘No! How could you think that?’

Lisa screwed her face up tightly before she carried on. ‘I noticed you in that magazine and it said you lived in Craneshill. I just wanted to see you. I’ve missed you so much. I haven’t seen Dad in years. Me and Mum barely speak. I wanted to talk about Jake.’ Lisa gabbled as I focused on delivering her baby, and I let her ramble on. ‘You know I didn’t ever want a baby. I can’t be a single mum. Couldn’t tell Mum I’d had an affair with a married man, like dad.’

‘You were pregnant when we met?’ I am strangely calm.

‘Yes, but I’d booked an abortion. It seemed like fate you wanted a baby and couldn’t have one. I thought I could make everything up to you. There was only a few weeks difference, and I thought if I kept you away from the scans you’d never know how far along I was. I read a newspaper article about that singer who wanted a surrogate and it was easy to pretend I’d done it before.’

Another contraction swept over her and the sounds she was making were like an animal in distress. She was panting hard as she started to speak again.

‘I don’t see Mum often anyway. I knew I could avoid her for a few months, and by the time he was born and you found out from the date he couldn’t possibly be yours, it would be too late. You’d already love him. Want him. Give him the home I never could. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I panicked. I’m so sorry.’

‘How could you?’ There had been no surprise in my voice. Only resignation. I think that part of me had already known.

‘My life is a mess, Kat. I’ve never had a career. I’ve always suffered with bouts of depression, spending weeks in bed at a time. I’ve never been able to stick to a job. I made up working in the hospital so you’d respect me. I didn’t think there was any harm. I’d get some cash and you’d get the family you wanted.’

My fingers touched the gold cross around my neck as Lisa screwed up her face that was scarlet and slick with sweat. She grunted and I hated her and was glad she was suffering, and yet there was part of me that still cared, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Lisa and Jake and I, we are a tangle of past, present and future. Once her contraction had passed she babbled again.

‘I realised how much I had missed you. It felt good to be friends again. New Year, when I came to stay and saw the nursery, saw how much it meant to you, and I met Nick properly, I knew I had to stop. I felt so guilty. It wasn’t fair to let you believe the baby was his. Yours.’

‘Was it ever twins?’ I was desperate for something to be real.

‘No. I did slip on the ice. That was true. I pretended to have a miscarriage. Because I cared about you. I felt awful deceiving you both. I was a mess. It was too late to have an abortion and I didn’t know what to do. But then you came and found me and it seemed like fate. I didn’t want to be without you again. It was easy to carry on lying. I’m so sorry this isn’t your baby, Kat. Or Nick’s.’

It had been a night for truth but sometimes you can hear so much it’s hard to take in, and you look back and wonder whether you ever actually heard it at all. I so desperately wanted this baby to be mine. All along I had believed he was, and sometimes believing is enough. It has to be. Lisa was half out of her mind with pain. She had no idea what she was saying. It is my baby. It is.

Nick gently places a blanket over Lisa, covering the face that I used to sprinkle with silver glitter before our school discos. The hard ball in my chest plummets into my gut.

‘Let’s go upstairs,’ he says. ‘Make some calls.’

I nod but as we reach the foot of the stairs I turn and hand Nick the baby. Back at Lisa’s side I pull down the blanket, lean over to the coffee table and click on the lamp.

‘She’s scared of the dark,’ I say through my choking sobs. I raise her hand to my cheek, linking her fingers through mine, remembering all the times we’d run out into the playground holding hands, eager to reach the hopscotch first. Although I had gone years without her, there’s a hollowness inside when I think I will never again hear her laugh. It seems impossible it was only a few months ago we reconnected. I still remember that day. The snow. The taste of frost and hope on my tongue. Lisa will never see another winter, and I feel my heart is breaking. Already, without her, I feel lost. Hopelessly, irretrievably lost.

‘Kat.’ Nick touches my shoulder.

‘I can’t…’ I can’t tear myself away from Lisa. I can’t leave her. I won’t be able to live with myself. My forehead lowers onto her chest, resting on a ribcage housing lungs that will never again draw in air.

‘She’s with Jake now,’ Nick says and that, at least, is some comfort.

‘Goodbye, Lisa.’ My fingers shake and it takes several attempts to unfasten the gold cross from my neck and place it around hers.

‘I’m sorry too,’ I say as I kiss her lips that are already losing their warmth. The kiss of Judas.

* * *

I stop in the doorway to the kitchen as I see Nick’s dad lying where he fell. I’d forgotten he was here.

Silently I watch as Nick kneels next to him and checks his pulse. His face is ashen as he turns to me. I already know what he is about to say.

‘Shit, Kat. He’s dead.’

‘You killed him.’ I shift the weight of the baby in my arms.

‘It was an accident,’ Nick says but now he has as much to lose as me.

And as much to hide.