Exhaustion has blunted my emotions and I no longer have to fight to contain the tears that threatened to spill. I haven’t cried. Not once. For if I cry, I’m giving up hope, and I am not doing that. Not yet. Once our call had been cut off, I had phoned Lisa over and over. Each time her answer service cut in and the words inviting me to speak after the tone sliced through me. I’d left an array of messages ranging from: ‘Lisa, we’re so worried about you, please call us back’, to: ‘Where the fuck are you?’, and the last one was: ‘Lisa, please tell me my baby is all right.’ I repeated ‘please, please, please’, over and over until Nick gently unclasped my fingers, and put my phone on the coffee table. He pulled me into his arms but I couldn’t allow myself to fall against him. I couldn’t allow myself to fall apart.

‘There’s probably a problem with the mobile signals because of the storm but I think we have to prepare ourselves for the worst, Kat.’ Nick had said, and I was screaming ‘no, no, no,’ over and over, though the room was silent, the words in my head. I clasped my hands over my ears as though I could somehow make the sound go away.

I had paced the room, a rat in a cage, trying to decide what to do. My mobile signal had vanished: Nick was right about the masts. I fetched the landline from the hallway, to ring the hospital.

The receptionist said: ‘Hello, Farncaster General,’ and just hearing the name of the town where I grew up made anxiety rocket through my veins, but Lisa hadn’t been admitted.

‘I can’t believe this has happened to me.’ I dropped my head in my hands.

‘To us,’ Nick said gently, rubbing my back as though I had been sick, and I had thought I might be.

‘Sorry. This must be horrible for you too.’

‘It is. You’re not alone, Kat. I do understand.’ Nick rested his chin on my head as I leaned back against him. ‘I know what it’s like to feel loss.’

We sat on the sofa, TV flickering in the corner, sound muted, flashes of lightning illuminating the room. Not knowing what else to say.

Nick refused to go to bed until I did and now, at 2 a.m., we slide under cold silk sheets but, instead of spooning Nick, linking my legs through his, warming my feet on his skin, as I usually would, I lie staring at the ceiling, waiting for Nick’s light breathing to rasp light snores. He is finally asleep. I ease myself out of bed, conscious of the shift of the mattress, and slip my feet into the fleecy slippers with penguin faces on Clare had bought me for Christmas. Silently, I pad downstairs for a bottle of wine, which I carry, with a glass, into the nursery. The orange glow of the night light I always leave plugged in should make it warm and inviting, but it feels as cold and as empty as I do inside.

Twisting the clunky dial of the mobile, it jerks into life. ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star.’ But outside the window the sky is as black as my heart.

Another baby. How can I have lost another baby? This one didn’t even have a name, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Any less loved. I sink into the rocking chair and flex my toes against the carpet, rocking back and forth, back and forth. How much loss can one person take? Self-pity tightens its fingers around me and threads its way through my thoughts.

I’m not religious but, at times like these, I wonder whether God is real. Whether he is punishing me for the person I was, not seeing the person I am now. I wonder whether I deserve this but not once do I ever think about giving up. I hold the rabbit in my lap. Run my fingers across his ears, listening to the crinkle, and I know.

I don’t quite know how but I know that I’m going to get a baby, even if it kills me.

* * *

I must have fallen asleep. The rising sun slicing through the window, casting stripes on the carpet through the bars of the cot, nudges me awake. I’m still rocking back and forth, and my calf muscles are aching but at least physically I am feeling something different from the numbness inside. Outside the storm is dying down, the rain a gentle patter against the window, the wind calmer now. The creak of our fence has subsided to a whisper as it gently sways. Reaching into the pocket of my dressing gown I pull out my phone. No missed calls. No messages. My thumb hovers over the ‘contact’ icon. Before I can dial Lisa, I wonder whether I should go and see her face-to-face. The thought fills me with dread. I have to decide whether my reluctance to go back to that place is greater than my desire to see her.

It isn’t.

Although I had sworn never to go there again, I’m going to Farncaster. As I stand, my legs are jelly and I tell myself it’s just because I’ve been in one position all night, but I know it’s more than that. I’m scared.

Sleet gusts through the crack in the car window, dampening my fringe, but I daren’t shut it: I’m relying on the freezing fume-filled air to keep me awake. I am anxious-hot anyway. Wet conditions are the worst conditions of all for driving. As I sit in traffic, engine thrumming, windscreen wipers swishing, a car crawls past, indicator flashing right, there is a heaviness in my chest as I notice the sunshine yellow ‘Baby on Board’ sign proudly displayed in the rear window.

My mobile buzzes and I glance at the screen, hoping it’s Lisa, but it’s Nick. He must have woken and read my scribbled note on his bedside cabinet telling him I’ll be back in a couple of days. I only hope that’s true.

* * *

It seems a long drive, although it’s only an hour. I have stopped once for coffee, sipping the scalding liquid, welcoming the caffeine hit before I carry on. The slip road ahead tells me Farncaster is only ten miles away. I indicate left and as I twist the steering wheel my empty Starbucks cup rolls about in the passenger footwell. Ten years. It’s been nearly ten years since I was last here, and my jaw locks as memories flit through my mind like stills from a film: the darkness, the sense of being trapped, the screaming, the pain. The terror I once felt floods back, pressing down on me, snatching my breath, and once more I have the feeling of being suffocated. The ‘Farncaster’ sign looms towards me, acting as a force field almost; my foot squeezes the brake and I screech to a halt. Somewhere to my right a horn blasts but everything is swimming in and out of focus, except my memories, which are clear and sharp. But it isn’t the person I was then that is feeling so terrified, it’s the person I am now.

‘I know what it’s like to feel loss,’ Nick had said. If I cross into Farncaster, the place where I so very nearly died, the place I promised never to return to, is he going to lose me too? My fingers scratch against my throat as though trying to dislodge the hands that I can still sometimes feel there.