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satisfied Natalie.
    The end was in sight. Just a few more days to go, and just like Lucy before her, she would be free.
    When she got to Bella Madden’s she half expected to see Richard loitering nervously outside, but there was no sign of him. She rang the bell and he came to the door to let her in.
    ‘You know what, I kind of wish you’d given it another quarter of an hour,’ he murmured as they walked along the cool flagstone-floored corridor to join the class.
    They stepped into the hushed conservatory, and she immediately saw what he meant. The other couples had arranged themselves in a loose semi-circle on the floor, and were looking at some bright, shiny, laminated pictures that Bella had cast down in front of them.
    All of the images showed the same couple – a weary bearded man and a pregnant woman in a chevron-patterned leotard and leggings? bracing themselves against each other in a variety of testing and profoundly unerotic positions.
    ‘Ah, Natalie,’ Bella said carryingly. ‘Great that you’re here, Richard was just saying he might have to sit this one out. These are positions for labour, showing how the man can support the woman, whether you’re in hospital or at home. So would everybody like to take one and give it a try for five minutes, and then swap round?’
    Natalie spotted one that didn’t look too gymnastic, and involved the woman leaning over a sofa while the man rubbed her back. She grabbed it and turned to Richard. He smiled at her resignedly.
    ‘Well done. I should be able to manage that,’ he said under his breath, and dragged a beanbag over to a corner so they could practise as unobtrusively as possible.
    Bella Madden was a celebrity midwife – that was to say, she’d delivered the babies of a couple of well-knownmedia personalities, and had grateful signed photographs to prove it. Bella herself looked like Everygran with a thyroid problem; she had curly, stiffly set iron-grey hair, and slightly protuberant, mud-coloured eyes. She was always dressed in readiness for a birth, in comfortable slacks and tops in pastel polyester, in case one of her clients called.
    Unlike her students, she was never disgusted, or defensive, or afraid; she spoke about pregnancy, labour and birth with robust enthusiasm. She was both experienced and knowledgeable, but the real source of her authority was her complete lack of embarrassment.
    Each class followed a pattern. After the introductions and how-are-you-alls, there was usually some kind of demonstration in the first half-hour, perhaps involving pictures or gynaecological models. A group discussion exercise followed, to lighten the mood and encourage bonding before the mid-session coffee break. The second half usually involved the sharing of empowering medical information, intended to dispel any fears raised by the first.
    Natalie hadn’t yet made a direct overture of friendship to any of the other women – she usually preferred to watch and wait, and let others make the first move. Anyway, she suspected that her favourite, the one she was most interested in watching, was the one least likely to buddy up with her.
    At the first meeting Bella had asked them to introduce themselves and suggest some way that other people could remember their names. The woman sitting nextto Natalie said, ‘I’m Adele. Like the illegitimate dancer’s daughter in
Jane Eyre
, the one Jane teaches, the silly little vain girl who likes pretty dresses.’
    Natalie had always loved
Jane Eyre
– it was her favourite book – and found this instantly memorable. (She and Richard had failed to come up with any neat ways for people to remember them.)
    At thirty-two, Adele was the baby of the group, and she was good-looking, in an unhealthy way – she was pale and often looked tired. Still, Natalie admired her Slavic cheekbones, suggestive mouth, heavy dark-blonde hair, and thin, expressive hands.
    Adele was sometimes thoughtful, sometimes flamboyant; she alternated between