Chapter 2

At five to six I went through the double doors into the pre-op bay behind a porter. I had asked for five minutes with him and they gave me five.

I found my son Oliver up on a trolley, seven years old, in a gown cut for a grown man. The sleeves came down over his fingers. I turned the left one back twice so his hand came free, and he gave me that hand. The right one had the cannula in it, taped flat, a clear line running up to a bag on a hook.

"Does it hurt?" I said.

"Only when I bend it."

"Then don't bend it." I laid his arm back down where the tape wanted it.

A woman in blue came to the doorway with a chart against her hip. The anaesthetist. She said four minutes, and then she looked back down at the chart.

I still had the consent form folded in my hand, the crease running through my husband Nathan's struck-out line. I pulled the blanket straight over Oliver's feet. It was already straight. I pulled it straight again.

"Mum," he said. "Dad already said goodbye."

I stopped.

"When?"

"After lunch. When the man put this in me." He lifted the taped hand an inch off the sheet. "He sat in that chair."

They had put the cannula in at four. It was five to six now. I had spent those two hours down the corridor with a pen in my hand, and he had been up here holding this.

"He said he had to go to a party for a baby," Oliver said. "To find out if it's a boy or a girl."

I counted the drops coming down the line. I got to nine.

"He said don't tell Mum."

"What else did he say to you?"

"That the party was for his friend. The lady from before he knew you." His eyes went up and to the left, the way they do when he is being careful. "He said her name was Bridget."

Bridget. The girl my husband loved before he ever met me. I had seen four photographs of her, all of them in his mother's house.

"Did he say when he was coming back?"

"Before they start." Oliver looked at the doors and then at me. "He said if I didn't tell you, he'd be back before they start."

The fold had gone soft where my palm had been on it. I put it in my coat pocket and took out my phone and called him. It rang out. I called again and let it ring the full length both times, so that it would sit on his screen. Down the corridor his coat was still over the back of the chair beside mine, both shoulders pushed out.

"You've not done anything wrong," I said.

"He said it was a secret."

"It isn't yours to keep." I put my face down beside his on the pillow so he could hear me without turning his head. "You don't carry anything in there for anybody. Not his, and not mine. You go in with nothing."

"Are you cross with him?"

"Yes."

He watched my face to see if I would take it back.

"Not with you," I said. "Never with you."

The anaesthetist knocked twice on the door frame and put her foot on the trolley brake. "We're going now, sweetheart," she said. The porter came round to the head end, and the rails gave their small metal knock as the wheels turned.

"Are you going to be there when I wake up?"

"I'll be the first thing you see," I said, and I walked beside him with my hand on the rail.

At the doors I let go.

"Mum," he said. "Will the baby be my brother?"

The doors swung in and swung back, and I was on the wrong side of them with my hand still out.