Sign it, Alethea. You can’t even afford a car seat.
Nobody moved. A midwife set a clipboard down on the desk.
She did not let go. She leaned in and said:
Just sign. Well?
And I did not look at her.
I was looking past her.
Because the doctor had come out of the nursery doors behind her, and he had stopped dead in the middle of that corridor.
And he was not looking at me.
He was staring straight at Philippa Wrexham.
PART 4
My son was born with a small streak of white hair at the front of his head.
About the width of my thumb, right at the hairline, against hair that is otherwise completely dark.
It is a family trait. It is harmless and it is rare, and it runs straight down a line from parent to child, and it has a name that I did not know that morning and that I have since looked up about forty times.
