Shrieking Brooke’s name as loudly as I could, out in the corridor, I brought her running quickly to my room.‘What’s happened, what’s wrong?’ she immediately cried concerned, legging it up the stairs two at a time. She appeared breathless outside the kitchen door. Brian appeared sleepily at his door too, awoken by the noise, and watched us.‘She’s moving,’ I cried.‘What? Flutters like before?’‘No more, here feel.’ I grabbed her hand and pushed it down onto myexposed belly. Brian averted his eyes as I stood, belly out and top up over my bra, in the middle of the corridor.‘I can’t push you that hard,’ she exclaimed, pulling back her fingers surprised. ‘It will hurt you, or her, I can’t do that.’‘Yes, you can,’ I insisted. ‘You won’t hurt us.’ I pulled her hand back and pushed her long fingers into my belly and we stood waiting, hardly daring to breathe. You kicked again, hard into my side, under Brooke’s long pink fingernails. Brooke jumped away from me in shock and then burst out laughing. She clapped her hands together delighted.‘Well?’ I asked her.‘She kicked me,’ Brooke shrieked still jumping up and down clapping. ‘She kicked me. That was amazing, let me do it again.’ She came back over towards me slowly. Cautiously she pushed her fingers into the same spot on my side. We waited again in silence and I saw her face slightly drop as the seconds ticked by.‘Ah it works,’ she yelled, as again she jumped back shocked as the tiny little feet thudded from my insides at her hand. ‘I love it. Do it again.’ I laughed and then Brian stepped forward.‘Can I have a go?’ he asked quietly, fiddling with his hands and stepping out of his room towards us.‘Of course you can, come here.’And that is how we spent the next few minutes out in the corridor by the kitchen, shrieking, whooping, and jumping around. If anyone had been in the house, I know they would probably have thought we were all mad. Mad, no. Thrilled and excited, most definitely.Baby girl, you did that to us. Thank you.

A pair of young mothers now became the centre of interest. They had risen from their lying-in much sooner than the doctors would otherwise have allowed. (French doctors are always very good about recognizing the importance of social events, and certainly in this case had the patients been forbidden the ball the might easily have fretted themselves to death.) One came as the Duchesse de Berri with l’Enfant du Miracle, and the other as Madame de Montespan and the Duc du Maine. The two husbands, the ghost of the Duc de Berri, a dagger sticking out of his evening dress, and Louis XIV, were rather embarrassed really by the horrible screams of their so very young heirs, and hurried to the bar together. The noise was indeed terrific, and Albertine said crossly that had she been consulted she would, in this case, have permitted and even encouraged the substitution of dolls. The infants were then dumped down to cry themselves to sleep among the coats on her bed, whence they were presently collected by their mothers’ monthly nannies. Nobody thereafter could feel quite sure that the noble families of Bregendir and Belestat were not hopelessly and for ever interchanged. As their initials and coronets were, unfortunately, the same, and their baby linen came from the same shop, it was impossible to identify the children for certain. The mothers were sent for, but the pleasures of society rediscovered having greatly befogged their maternal instincts, they were obliged to admit they had no idea which was which. With a tremendous amount of guilty giggling they spun a coin for the prettier of the two babies and left it at that.

Abruptly, the sea of people parted . . . and then there they were. Bella, with Nalla in her arms, Z standing beside his girls. Beth broke down all over again as the female came forward. God, it was impossible not to remember how Nalla had started this, putting into motion the need that had become undeniable. Bella was tearing up, too, as she stopped. “We just want to say yay!” At that moment, Nalla reached out to Beth, a gummy smile on her face, pure joy radiating out. No turning that down, nope, not at all. Beth took the little girl out of her mother’s arms and positioned her on her chest, capturing one of the pinwheeling hands and giving kisses, kisses, kisses. “You ready to be a big . . .” Beth glanced at Z and then her husband. “. . . a big sister?” Yes, Beth thought. Because that’s what the Brotherhood and their families were. Close as siblings, tighter than blood because they were chosen. “Yes, she is,” Bella said as she wiped under her eyes and looked back at Z. “She is so ready.” “My brother.” Z shoved out his palm, his scarred face in a half smile, his yellow eyes warm. “Congratulations.” Instead of shaking anything, Wrath shoved that ultrasound picture into his Brother’s face. “Do you see him? See my son? He’s big, right, Beth?” She kissed Nalla’s supersoft hair. “Yes.” “Big and healthy, right?” Beth laughed some more. “Big and healthy. Absolutely perfect.” “Perfect!” Wrath bellowed. “And this is a doctor saying it—I mean, she went to medical school.” Even Z started laughing at that point. Beth gave Nalla back to her parents. “And Dr. Sam told me she’s delivered over fifteen thousand babies over the course of her career—” “See!” Wrath yelled. “She knows these things. My son is perfect! Where’s the champagne? Fritz! Get the fucking champagne!

Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.