It is about the size of a thumbnail, on the back of her left shoulder, and it is a slightly darker brown than the rest of her and it has a shape to it.
It is not rare and it is not medically anything and the paediatrician looked at it in the morning and said so in about four seconds.
And Saul Burrell has seen it before.
On the fourteenth of March, 2019.
Bryony.
That is what he called her.
I did not know that until half past four in the morning on the twelfth of October, 2025, in a side room at St Jerome’s, with our other daughter asleep eleven feet away.
Six years.
We lost her at twenty-two weeks, which is the furthest any of them got, and she is the only one of the six who was anything other than a word.
And they asked us whether we wanted to see her.
And I said no.
What Saul did.
He said yes.
And I knew that at the time — I was in that bed and I heard him say it — and I have never once, in six years, asked him anything about it.
He was in that room for about twenty minutes.
And when he came back he sat down next to me and did not say anything, and I did not ask, and the next morning we went home.
And in those twenty minutes he held her, and he looked at her properly, and at some point he noticed a mark on the back of her left shoulder.
And six and a half years later a woman at a warming station put another baby into his arms with one shoulder out of a blanket.
And the hospital at the time, who did it properly and who I have never given any credit.
They asked twice.
Not once. That is the thing I had wrong in my own account until a midwife called Hetty said something to me on the twelfth of October, 2025, about how they do it now.
And it set me off checking, and there is a line in the notes from 2019, and they asked me again about four hours later.
And I said no the second time as well.
