“In the end they settled on Caroline Rebecca, although Frances didn’t particularly like either name – but Andrew had suggested them, and anyway she couldn’t face thinking of any others.  She held that fact secret, one of the first of many, further proof that she wouldn’t really have minded if the birth had been just a few seconds longer, if the cord had been that little bit tighter, if poor Caroline Rebecca had stopped breathing before she began.  The effort of shoving that thought away (who could she ever tell?) took up years and years of Frances’s life and turned her hard inside, right in the centre of herself where she had once been soft and motherly.”

Extract from ‘One Step Too Far’ – included in the showcase