The baby's cries are subsiding into shuddering breaths. Elina shifts his position so that he is looking up at the sky. 'No,' she says. 'Don't worry.'

'Is he hungry?'

'I don't think so. He only fed . . . I don't know . . . half an hour ago.'

They sit down again on the rug and Elina sees the bowl of pasta. She'd forgotten about it. She puts on the sunglasses and, placing the baby so that he is looking over her shoulder, starts to eat with her spare hand. He clutches at the collar of her shirt, snuffs his wet mouth into the skin of her neck, his breath sounding hot in her ear.

'It's amazing how you can do that,' Ted says.

'What?'

'That.' He indicates the baby with his fork.

'What do you mean?'

'He's crying really crying and you come along and pick him up and he stops. Like magic. Like a spell. It's only with you. He doesn't do it with me.'

'Doesn't he?'

'No. I can't get him to stop like you can, it's-'

'That's not true. I'm sure you can-'

'No, no.' Ted shakes his head. 'It's a special thing you have with him. It's like he has this internal timer that measures how long he hasn't seen you and without warning it can just go off and nothing else will mollify him.' He shrugs. 'I've been noticing it this week.'

Elina thinks about this. The baby, sucking her shirt, seems to be thinking about it too. 'It's probably just these,' she says, gesturing at her breasts.

Ted shakes his head again, grinning. 'No, although I wouldn't blame him. But it's not that, I promise you. It's like . . . it's like he needs a dose of you at regular intervals. To check you're still there. To check you haven't gone anywh-' He breaks off in mid-sentence. Elina glances up at him. Ted is kneeling on the rug, a forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth. He is motionless, his face screwed up.

'Hey,' she says, 'are you OK?'

He puts down his fork with a clatter. 'Fine . . . Just feel a bit . . .'

'A bit what?'

'Just . . .' He presses both hands to his eyes. 'I just get this . . . thing sometimes where . . .'

Elina puts down her own fork. 'Where what?'

'Where my eyes go a bit funny.'

'Your eyes?'

'It's really nothing,' he murmurs. 'It's fine. I've . . . I've had it . . . all my life.'

'All your life?' she repeats. What can he mean, all his life? She puts down the baby on the rug and crouches next to Ted. She touches his back, moves her hand up and down his spine. 'How long does it last?' she asks, after a while.

Ted is still hunched into himself, shielding his eyes. 'Not long,' he gets out. 'Any minute now. Sorry.'

'Don't be silly.'

'It's weird, it hasn't happened for-'

'Ssh,' she says. 'Don't talk. Shall I get you some water?'

When she comes back with a glass he has straightened up. He is sitting staring at the baby, his head tilted, frowning. She hands him the water. 'How are you? Are your eyes OK again?'

He nods.

'What was that?' She touches her hand to his forehead. ' Ted, you're freezing and what's the word damp?'

'Clammy,' he mutters.

'Clammy,' she says. 'I think you should go to the doctor.'

He takes a sip of the water and grunts.

'You must.'

'No, it's fine. I'm fine.'

'You're not fine.'

'I am.' He shakes his hair out of his eyes, looks up at her. 'I'm fine,' he says again. 'Really.' He puts his arm around her, kisses her neck. 'Don't look so worried. It's nothing at all, just-'

'It doesn't sound like nothing.'

'It is. I used to have them all the time when I was a child. Haven't had one for years and years until the other day and-'

'This happened the other day? And you didn't tell me?'

'Elina,' he takes both her hands in his, 'it's nothing. I promise.'

'You need to see a doctor.'

'I've seen every doctor there is to see about this. When I was young. I've had eye-scans and brain-scans and everything-scans. Ask my mother.'

'But, Ted-'

At that moment, the baby starts to sob from his position on the rug.

'Look,' Ted says, 'the internal timer's gone off.'

And later that day, or perhaps the next it's hard to tell because she hasn't been to sleep Elina sits on the sofa, the length of her spine resting against cushions, her feet planted together on the carpet. In one hand, she is feeling the heaviness of a glass paperweight.

It is a near-perfect sphere, flattened out at the base so that it sits without rolling on a table-top. It has hundreds of tiny bubbles in it. Elina holds it up to her eye and peers through it at a murky, distant, greenish place with holes in its atmosphere the shape of tears.

She likes this paperweight, the cold, clear heft of it. She likes the way that the air from the room in which it was made, on the day it was made, is trapped inside it for ever. Perhaps even air breathed out by the person who made it. It fits so exactly to her palm and it must be the size of the head of an unborn baby at what? six months? Five? She would like to photograph it, from very close range. She must do that soon. One day. Where is her camera anyway? Out in the studio? She should look for it, put it somewhere safe. She would like to capture the secret, still space inside the paperweight. She would like to squeeze inside it.

She laces both hands underneath it and lets her gaze drift up into the room.

'And I tried to tell her,' Ted's mother is saying from the other sofa, twisted round to address Ted, who is in the kitchen, 'that the reason why she hasn't received a card from me is that you just will not decide on a name. But she wasn't having any of it. Very mardy, she was.' Ted's mother twitches then smooths the cuff of her blouse and Elina sees that she is trying to mask her irritation. 'Have you had any more thoughts on what you'll call him?'

Ted makes some unintelligible reply from inside the fridge.

Elina blinks. She is experiencing, just for a second, the sensation of having someone's hands up inside your skin, near your ribs, pushing, pushing at something. She blinks again to make it go away.

Ted's mother turns back to the room, shifting herself against the sofa. She'd said when they'd first bought it that it would never be comfortable as there was no head support. Elina wonders now if she is feeling the lack of cushioning in her cranial area.

'Well,' she says, 'I never thought that by the time my grandson was almost a month old I still wouldn't be able to send out cards. All my relatives are dying to get one.'

'Why don't you just send them?' Ted's father says, with only a hint of gritted teeth, from behind a newspaper. And Elina is surprised to see him because it's rare for Ted's parents to come together: they usually operate on separate schedules.

'Yeah,' Ted says, as he comes in, carrying a tray. 'They don't have to have his name on, do they?'

His mother gasps, as if they are suggesting something lewd. 'Not have his name on? Of course they must have his name on!'

Ted shrugs and starts to pour the tea.

'What about Rupert?' his mother says brightly. 'I've always loved the name Rupert and it's an old family name on my side.'

'Sounds like . . . a whatdyoucallit?' Ted's father says, folding up the newspaper and tossing it to the floor.

'What?'

'A . . .' Ted's father puts his hand to his brow '. . . you know . . . a thing that children take to bed. Um . . . Brideshead . . . um . . . teddy-bear! That's it. A teddy-bear.' He reaches down and picks up the newspaper again. 'It sounds like a teddy-bear,' he says, as he scans the front page for the second time.

'What does?' his mother says.

'The name Rupert.'

Elina hears the word: clamp. She hears: rupture. She hears: stargazer presentation.

Ted makes another uninterpretable noise, then says, 'Here's your tea. How have things been with you? Been busy this week?'

'Or Ralph. How about Ralph? He looks like a Ralph. And it was my grandfather's middle name. It has a lovely ring to it. It would go well with the surname, too.'

'Um.' Ted glances at Elina. She keeps her face very still; she shifts the paperweight in her hands. The glass surface has become warm to the touch. She can see Ted debating whether to broach this or not, then she sees him decide to take the plunge. 'Actually,' he says, handing his parents cups of tea, 'we've decided to give him Elina's surname. He'll be a Vilkuna.'

When Ted's mother came to visit at the hospital, the baby was three hours old. Elina can remember it all now. With her one free arm, Elina was holding him against her chest, where he was asleep, his limbs folded under him, his face pressed up against her skin. Her other arm was bandaged and wrapped into a mysterious chrysalis. Tubes came in and came out again. Various bags were suspended above her head. From under the blanket, there were more tubes entering and leaving her. She wasn't yet allowing herself to think about where those ones were going in.

She appeared to be banked up on numerous pillows. Something she wasn't sure what, the morphine, perhaps was making her eyes roll backwards in their sockets every few minutes. It made the room lurch and pitch and Elina had to struggle to stay in the here and now, not to give in to the medicine's dragging force. It was like a strong current in the sea, pulling her down.

Ted was across the room, a long way off, it seemed, in a chair. He had a pen in his hand and he was filling in some forms. As she looked, he raised his head, and Elina almost gasped because his face was such a shock: drawn, grey, tense, it was a skin-covered mask. She felt that he might be a stranger, might be anyone. What's happened? she wanted to say. Why do you look like that?

The door swung open and Elina turned her head and suddenly Ted's mother was in the room.

'Ohhhh!' she squealed. 'Ohhhh! My darling!' She swooped across the room and for a disconcerting moment, Elina thought she meant her. But Ted's mother wasn't looking at her. She was lifting up the baby and settling him in her arms. 'You,' she said, and Elina wondered why she was talking so loudly, 'just look at you.'

She had her back to the bed now and was walking away towards the window. Where the baby had been on Elina's chest felt damp. She could feel the outline of the baby on herself, where warmth had generated between them. She saw her hand, her chrysalis hand, raising itself from the bed, as if she would speak. But she wasn't sure what she would say and Ted was getting up from the chair and her eyes were doing that rolling thing so that all she saw before she forced them down again was the ceiling, the bags of fluid hanging above her.

'. . . just terrible,' Ted was saying, with his new, grey face, and Elina had to strain to hear him, '. . . lost his heartbeat and . . . whisked into theatre . . . but then everything just . . . everywhere, an unbelievable . . . Elina nearly-' Ted came to a halt, swallowing his final word.

For a moment, no one spoke. There was the slight, impossible sound of the baby's breathing: a rapid, fluttering in out. The silence in the room seemed as fragile, as intricate, as frost.

'Mmm, oh dear,' Ted's mother said. 'Get my camera, would you? It's in my bag there.' She was gazing down at the baby. Her expression was hard to read. It was rapt, fierce, complicated. It was one of covetousness or avid desire, and it sent a pulse of fear through Elina. And the baby, as if sensing this, let out an abrupt high-pitched cry.

From the bed, Elina saw her arm rise up again. This time Ted saw. He came over and leant his head towards her, his hand taking hold of hers. 'What is it?' he said. 'Are you OK?'

'The baby.' Elina was surprised at how hoarse her voice was. 'I want the baby back.'

And here she is again, Ted's mother, sitting on the sofa she'd complained about, waiting for the baby to wake up so she can 'have a hold'.

'Vilkuna?' she is saying, as if it's a swearword. 'He'll be a Vilkuna? You're not going to give your son his proper name?'

Ted adjusts the angle of his mug, keeping his eyes on the rug under his feet. 'There's no reason why a child should have his father's name instead of-'

'No reason? No reason? There's every reason in the world. People are going to think he's a . . . that he's illegitimate, that he's-'

'Well, he is,' Elina says.

Ted's mother turns her head with a jerk, as if she'd forgotten Elina was there and the sound of her voice had given her a fright.

'In my day,' she begins in a shaking voice, 'that was not something people broadcast. In my day-'

'The world's changed, Mum.' Ted stands, picking up his mug. 'Let's face it. More tea?'

After his parents leave, tucking themselves into their neat little silver car and driving back to Islington, Ted returns to the sitting room. There isn't a surface that isn't covered with the flotsam and jetsam of the day: nappies have washed up all over the floor, coffee cups on the tables, a breast pump on the television, cards brought by his mother, a half-eaten plate of biscuits on the bookshelves, a baby-care manual face down on a chair.

Ted sighs and slumps on to the sofa. He had had no idea that having a baby would entail so much entertaining, so many visitors, so many phone calls and emails, so many pots of tea to be made, served, cleared away, washed up, that the mere act of procreation meant that people suddenly wanted to come around several times a week and sit in your house for hours on end.

Ted clears away the tea tray. He walks about the sitting room, past Elina, who is wiping something off one part of the baby's body while simultaneously smearing something on another, picking his way through toys, rattles, nappies, wipes, muslin squares. He gathers up stray coffee cups, cake plates, moves them from the sitting room to the kitchen. Elina hands him the baby before getting down on her hands and knees and scrubbing at a stain milk? sick? shit? on the rug.

Ted holds his son to his chest and does circuits of the room, round and round the table. The baby's eyes roll in their sockets, he sucks absently on his thumb surely he'll sleep. Ted walks on, listing from side to side, a ship in calm seas. The baby's eyelids droop, his sucking slows, but as soon as he falls asleep his thumb drops out and he jerks awake again, his eyes rolling open in dismay. Suck, suck, eyes close, thumb falls out, eyes open and round they go again, past Elina, who is now folding muslin squares, through the toys, over the changing mat, through the nappies. Ted adjusts his position so that the thumb arm is wedged against him, immovable, but the change seems to remind the baby of something because he starts, back stiff, neck twisting, alert to the possibility of food.

Ted tries a bit longer to get him to sleep but all he wants now is to eat he cries, he frets, he strains and struggles and eventually Ted taps Elina on the shoulder. Without a word, she sweeps a mess of wipes, instructions for sterilisers, baby socks, unopened cards off the chair on to the floor and sits, lifting her blouse.

Ted is surprised at how smoothly and quickly she does the latching on: unsnaps her bra with one hand, while the other does a swift tilting motion with the baby. He gives a final, high cry of relief and is then silent. Elina settles herself deeper into the chair and lets her head fall back to the wall. Ted registers again how pale she is, how dark and deep are the circles around her eyes, how thin her limbs look. He is possessed with an urge to apologise for what he isn't sure. He scans his mind for something to say, something light and perhaps witty, something to take them out of themselves, to remind them that life is not all like this. But he can't think of anything and now the baby is rearing back, crying, fidgeting, fists flailing, and Elina is having to open her eyes, sit up again, lift him to her shoulder, rub his back, untangle his hands from her hair and Ted cannot bear it. He cannot bear to watch her having to rouse herself, to lift that tired head from the wall, to rev herself into action. He lunges for a forgotten cake plate and makes for the kitchen.

The baby cannot settle to his feed. Elina pushes herself into a standing position. Sometimes the only thing that works is feeding him while she walks around. The movement seems to soothe him, seems to allow him to digest. Or something. She walks slowly, slowly to the window, then back. The baby fusses, turns his head this way, then back, and finally latches on. Elina keeps walking, letting out her breath a bit at a time. Ted is in the kitchen now, his hands in the washing-up bowl.

'Ted,' she says, as she passes on the way to the television, where she turns round and walks back, because she wants to say something to him, wants them both to recall that they are more to each other than just parents of the same child.

'Mmm?' He lifts a dripping cup from the water.

The problem is she can't think of what to say. 'How are you doing?' she tries.

He looks at her, surprised. 'I'm fine. How are you doing?'