I went in. A woman on a trolley was pushed past, bleeding. A doctor was running, his stethoscope flapping against his stomach; the doors to the ambulance bay swung open and a screeching siren filled the white corridor, panic bouncing off the walls. A place of urgency and tension and pain.

I looked into cubicle after cubicle, flimsy blue curtains dividing intense scenes from separate dramas. In one cubicle was Rowena, barely conscious. Maisie was sobbing next to her, but I only paused long enough to see that it wasn’t Jenny and then I moved on.

At the end of the corridor was a room rather than a cubicle. I’d noticed doctors going in, and none coming out.

I went in.

There was someone appallingly hurt on the bed in the middle of the room, surrounded by doctors.

I didn’t know it was her.

I had known her baby’s cry from any other baby’s almost the moment she was born; her calling for Mummy had sounded unique, unmistakable amongst other toddlers; I could find her face immediately, however crowded the stage. I knew her more intimately than I knew myself.

As a baby I knew every square centimetre of her; each hair in her eyebrows. I’d watched them being drawn, pencil stroke by pencil stroke, in the first days after birth. For months, I’d stared down at her for hour after hour, day after day, as I fed her from my breasts. It was dark the February she was born and as spring turned to summer it brought increased clarity in how I knew her.

For nine months, I’d had her heart beating inside my body; two heartbeats for every one of mine.

How could I not know it was her?

I turned to leave the room.

I saw sandals on the appallingly damaged person on the bed. The sandals with sparkly gems that I’d got her from Russell & Bromley as an absurdly early and out-of-season Christmas present.

Lots of people have those kind of sandals, lots and lots; they must manufacture thousands of them. It doesn’t mean it’s Jenny. It can’t mean it’s Jenny. Please.