But one day, when Toby is old enough, I will take down a shoe box from a shelf where it is kept, and I will tell him again the story of his sister, Isabel Margaret Cavendish, the girl who came before.

Love flows from me into him, and his blue eyes crinkle, huge and happy. Such a smiley baby. The midwife says it can't be a real smile, not yet, just some passing gas or a random quiver of his lip, but I know she's wrong.

Oh, hasn't he told you? The ones before. None of them last, you see. That's the whole point.

But I know he loves me. I know he needs our games, that they answer some deep-seated hunger in him.

All these men who loved Emma, I think. For all her problems, men were fixated on her. Will anyone ever feel like that about me?

I feel a thrill of excitement at this first tiny glimpse of self-revelation, of intimacy.