I was able to hold our baby later after I’d come round again. She was so tiny, as Ollie had said. She weighed in at nine ounces and was only seven and a half inches long. She was whiter than snow and smooth as silk. She had all ten fingers and all ten toes. She had little round eyes and a bump for a nose, delicate, sweet lips and perfect, minuscule ears. She looked like a real baby, no different from any other I’d seen except her skin was so thin that all her many veins were visible. I stared at her as I rocked her in my arms. I wasn’t able to weep. I just held her for a long while knowing that I would never be able to do it again. I wondered about her, what she would have been like. I would never know. I would never know how her smile would have looked or hear the sound of her laugh. I wondered what colour eyes she had beneath those sealed lids, what shade her hair might have been had it been able to grow. I held her to my breast and I whispered to her promises only mothers make to children. I told her how much I loved her and how sorry I was that I’d not been able to protect her. I only had a while to prove my love to a child I was going to have to give away too soon.

“Mum wants to know,” Oliver whispered later when I was almost ready to let her go, “If you’d like a picture of her.”

I looked down into that tiny, beautiful face and I shook my head. I didn’t need a picture. I’d never forget her. She was going to be a part of me forever.

I let the nurse take our daughter away. She did it with such loving hands. I never told her how much I appreciated that and I should have. Even in death that child was treated with nothing but gentleness and respect. In that way, maybe she was the luckiest of us all.

I went home two days later in a daze. The only thing that made me know that any of it was real or had actually happened was that my heart ached and the pain kept me from sleep and food. There was no laughter in the cabin. Oliver and I barely spoke. The doctor had warned us not to try to conceive for a while and had given me a prescription for contraceptives, which I threw in the rubbish bin on the way out. I knew he meant well, but in my mind the chances of me getting pregnant again so quickly were astronomical. The other thought was that after what I had gone through with losing our baby there was absolutely no way that I was going to destroy another. No, nature was going to do what it would do and I was going to allow it to happen.

Then there was the business of having a funeral. I might have just had her buried quietly and kept her memory all to myself, but it was important to Oliver that her life be validated. I had been unconscious when he’d filled out the birth and death certificates for our child. Not having any idea of what we would have called her if she’d been born alive, he simply wrote “Cara”, a Welsh name for “Beloved”, on the line for her name.

Our precious Cara’s short life was honoured on a sunny Friday morning. When we first got to the funeral parlour, Oliver and I walked in and went straight to the casket. We wrapped our arms around each other and stood alone before the coffin and stared in numb disbelief. Then we sat together on a single, metal folding chair and we held tight to each other, knowing if we didn’t one of us would fall to the ground. Neither of us sobbed, we just clung until we could rise and then we turned our backs to the casket and greeted our guests with hugs and handshakes.

They filed in one by one. Some sombre, some forcing smiles, all of them trying to support us through something that we didn't completely understand. Oliver and I held hands and soldiered through as the line grew longer and longer, trying not to remember that that tiny box was the only bed our daughter would ever know.

“I won’t let you go, “He whispered.

“Never," I responded as I squeezed his hand tighter.

“It’s just me and you, Sil," He didn’t look at me. He stared straight ahead, his eyes focused on something I couldn’t see. I watched the muscle in his jaw tighten. He turned his head slowly and showed me his face. The light caught his dark eyes.

“I love you,” I whispered. He said nothing. There was nothing to say. I watched tears well up in his eyes and I watched him blink them back. He looked away. I just stood with him and shared his shock and sorrow while the world we knew crumbled around us. Helpless, we let it fall.

Alexander made no secret of his sadness or his tears, nor did he shy from opening the lid of the coffin and placing his hands inside. He cradled his niece with his fingers. He kissed her tiny head, marvelled at how perfect she was, and whispered to her in Welsh for a long time. No one interrupted him. No one suggested that he hurry or stop. No one told him to close the lid. He was given his time to say his hello and goodbye all at once. When he was through, he sat at the right side of his brother and he took my sister under his arm. He did what he could to comfort Lucy through her grief. I watched him wipe her face with the sleeve of his suit, saw him kiss the top of her strawberry coloured hair and rock her in his arms. I thanked God that he was there to do for her what I absolutely could not. I was frozen in my shoes, unable to reach out to anyone but my husband. I kept digging my fingernails into my skin to check if I were dreaming.

Lance sat in the back of the room with Josh McGuigan and Gareth Hughes, a boy Oliver used to play rugby against from Kerry. Loads of people came. It was truly amazing how many people cared. None of them said much to us. There was no need. They were there. It was all that mattered. My father came to call later in the day. He drew me close in what was supposed to be a fatherly way, but I was too stiff in his arms and he let me go.

“I'm so sorry, Silvia,” He said sincerely, cupping my face in his dry hands. He brushed the hair from my shoulder, “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”

“No,” I answered him simply, looking a little too hard into his eyes. I was so angry with him. I was his daughter. I was his healthy, living, breathing daughter and he’d sent me away, sent me off to school like I was some rubbish he hadn’t the time to deal with. My daughter was dead. My daughter had been torn away from me before I had the chance to even know her. How dare he come now and try to be my father when he’d had every chance before and passed them by?

He knew I was angry with him. He's known I was angry with him for years, but he'd never worked out why. If he had taken the time to look at himself, really look at himself, maybe he would have seen me there, lurking, begging for the attention I never got from him. If he had taken the time to notice, maybe he would have seen he had a daughter who once loved him with all of her heart, but didn't need him at all now. He'd never been there when I did and I'd learned to care for myself. Even in this chaos, even in all of my pain and suffering, his daughter, me, didn't need him. And not only did I not need him, I didn't want him. It was too little too late.

He said nothing else to me, but turned to Oliver instead. Oliver, in his kind way, put his hand on my father's shoulder and squeezed it, “There's nothing you can do,” He said simply, “Thank you for being here. Lucy's quite torn up, though.”

Dad nodded. He seemed relieved to be set free and hurried over to Lucy, who made a loud huffing noise when she saw him and fell into his embrace.

“Good,” I thought, “They can take care of each other and leave me to my business.”

I hid my face in the coat of Oliver’s suit.

Dad lingered awhile, but he left later without saying goodbye.

Oliver’s entire family including aunts, uncles, his ancient Gran, and all of his cousins came by in sets. Most of his cousins were near our age and they all had little ones. They’d dressed them in clothes fit for Easter and held on to their little hands, worried that their presence would bother us. Oliver told them no and to let them run about.