Inside the paper was his grandfather’s watch. Not valuable in the way strangers assume, a steel Longines from 1962, but Bennett had asked for it every year since he was eleven and Rosalind had always said he would get it when he had earned it. She held it flat in her palm and named her condition. Six months. He would do every night feed, every nappy through the night, and one full day alone with Wren each week while I left the house and went wherever I liked. If he managed the six months without complaint, the watch was his. If he did not, it went to his cousin in Málaga.

He agreed in about two seconds, which told me everything about what that watch meant and everything about what the previous seven months had meant.

The first three weeks were bad. He was exhausted and irritable and twice he tried to negotiate. Rosalind stayed eleven weeks and refused, every time, without raising her voice once.