I was twenty-eight weeks with triplets and bleeding on a hotel sofa when my husband adjusted his tie and went downstairs. Four days later a man I had never met put a small black recorder on my hospital bed.

Then white light and masks and voices over the top of me.

Baby A out. Baby B. And then a pause that went on too long, and somebody saying a number I did not understand.

I said the names I had chosen in the March. Mira. Juno. Lark.

And then nothing.

I came round four days later in intensive care and my sister Nessa was in the chair.

She did not say hello. She put a tablet in my hands.

Callum was behind a podium with the state seal on it and his eyes were wet.

"I've spent every moment of these four days praying for my wife and our girls."

Nessa said, "He wasn't there."

"He told them he came straight to the hospital."

"He didn't."

And then the door opened and a man in a suit I had never seen in my life came in, and put a small black recorder on the table across my bed.