“Why are we doing this?” Maddie said suddenly.

I gave her a sideways look. “Meeting today? Or meeting them at all?”

“Both. Any of it. Perhaps we should just have—I don’t know, politely refused to engage. Perhaps that would have been the best thing for everyone, in the long run.”

“It’s not too late. We could make an excuse—”

She shook her head. “I don’t really mean it. And sorry for snapping about the toy. I’m just nervous, I suppose.”

“About the meeting? Or seeing Theo’s cousin?” We’d agreed not to use the words our son in front of Theo. He probably wouldn’t understand, but it was best to be careful.

“Both. But mainly David. I just can’t help thinking—he’s our, our offspring. I carried him. And we have absolutely no idea what sort of person he is. That’s just crazy, isn’t it?”

“Big car,” Theo said. I looked around. He was pointing at the four-wheel-drive BMW parked in the Lamberts’ drive.

“Very big car,” I agreed. “But big cars aren’t always better. They put lots of dirt into the air, for one thing.”

“Come on, let’s do this.” Maddie reached down and squeezed my hand, then unbuckled her seatbelt.

* * *

—

   WHAT DO YOU TAKE as a gift in that situation? We’d opted for flowers for Lucy, and we’d let Theo choose a small packet of sweets for David. He’d decided on chocolate buttons. I’d mentally run through all the objections Lucy might raise—some mothers were funny about sweets of any kind—but these were only 160 calories, the chocolate was Fairtrade, and, most important, I knew there were exactly ten buttons in every bag, so they were eminently shareable.

We climbed the steps to the front door, which Theo managed by himself; rang the bell—more complicated than it sounds: It turned out the entry intercom was back by the gate into the drive—and then the door opened and there was Miles, casual in a patterned shirt, chinos, and deck shoes without socks. “Come in, come in, good to see you,” he said to me and Maddie, before eagerly crouching down to Theo and putting his hand up, palm out, in the universal gesture that means “high five.”

“Hey there, Theo,” he said gently.

Theo, for reasons of his own, chose to interpret Miles’s flat hand as a target to be punched. “Bouff!” he said as he hit him. Miles laughed and stood up.

“Lucy’s through here.”

He led us to the rear of the house, into a slate-floored kitchen the size of our entire ground floor. The blond woman I’d last seen outside the nursery was standing by a red Aga, making tea. Once again she was stylishly dressed, in tight white jeans and a shawl made of mohair or angora. “Hello!” she said brightly, coming over and kissing us both on the cheek. I sensed she was just as nervous as we were. “Oh, how kind.” She took the flowers and reached under the big ceramic sink for a vase.

“And this is David,” Miles said behind us. Maddie and I turned as one.

   Miles had carried David in from an adjoining room, so he was at our height. He was smaller than Theo—a lot smaller—and in the flesh, you could tell at once there was something fragile about him. His fair hair was very fine, and his features were elfin, almost girlish, which made the resemblance to Maddie even stronger. He looked at us anxiously, a little dull-eyed, as if he’d just woken up.

“Hi,” I said, stepping forward and shaking his little hand gently by the wrist. “I’m Pete.”

“And I’m Maddie.” Maddie reached toward him eagerly with both hands, as if to take him, and David shrank back.

“He’s quite a shy little chap, I’m afraid.” Miles squatted down, still holding David, so David was in Theo’s eyeline. “We weren’t allowed to have other children around at all until a couple of months ago—he’s still very immunosuppressed. You’re just about the first visitors who Lucy hasn’t made scrub their arms with alcohol gel.”

“Theo,” I began, meaning to prompt him to say hello, but Theo had already stepped forward. Being at nursery had made him confident with other children, and now he held up his hand dramatically, thrusting the bag of chocolate buttons at David for inspection like a policeman’s badge. “Ho!” he said proudly. David stared at him, uncomprehending.

“He’s not allowed chocolate, I’m afraid,” Lucy said.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said apologetically. “I thought, since it was a special occasion…”

“It’s not that. He can’t digest it. He has a reflux condition that’s triggered by any kind of fat. When he gets an attack he has to go straight back on oxygen, which he hates.”

“I’ll take that, Theo,” I said quickly, plucking the bag from his hand. He rounded on me, his eyes expressing his outrage, but I’d already pocketed it. I was probably going to make his own snatching problem worse by grabbing it like that, I reflected, but it wasn’t the moment to worry about that. “Why don’t you ask David to show you some of his toys?” I added.

   Miles gently set David down. He was unsteady on his feet, teetering wide-legged like a baby. From the bulkiness of his trousers, it was clear he was still wearing a regular nappy rather than pull-ups or pants.

“Michaela?” Miles called.

“Yes, Mr. Lambert?” A girl of about twenty appeared in the doorway. She, too, was blond, although her hair had black showing at the roots. She sounded Eastern European.

“Could you take David, and show Theo where to find some toys?”

“Of course. Come with me, Theo, they’re all in here.”

“What toys do you like, David?” Maddie asked gently as Michaela picked him up. He didn’t reply, although his head turned toward her curiously. With a stab of horror I realized he hadn’t understood the question.

He was brain-damaged. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise—the possibility had been drummed into us in the NICU, over and over. But week by week, as Theo had thrived and prematurity slowly lost its grip, we’d started taking normality for granted. Forgetting just how lucky we’d been.

Or rather, how lucky Theo had been. Because—I now realized—the doctor who’d told Maddie how poorly our son was, and how he might not survive that initial episode of oxygen starvation unscathed, had been right. The child he had been talking about was David, and his mind was clearly impaired.

“David’s not very chatty,” Lucy said nervously. “He’s not nearly so advanced as Theo.”