“It’ll have to be something my German relations can pronounce,” said my husband.

“And it’ll have to be something we’ve not used already in the family,” I said. My father is the youngest of nine, married quite late and was thirty-three when they had me, so all of the cousins already have children and some of them even have grandchildren. It doesn’t leave a lot. We’ve even got two Giles and two Hollies, not exactly common names.

She was bumping around on my cervix, threatening to come out any minute, or so I thought. Probably an effect of having had the two of them so close together. Everything was all a bit loose down there. Of course we didn’t know she was a she yet. We’d refused to be told after the scan. Anyway scans weren’t so efficient then. They often got it wrong. We are talking almost twenty-seven years ago. And there’s something to be said about waiting to be surprised and painting the nursery yellow – well beige as it happens.

“Well, if she’s a girl, she can’t be Emily, because if Ashley had been a girl he would have been Emily,” I said.

Bump bump, bump. No. (S)he didn’t like that.

“Thank god for that,” said Martin. “One in the family was enough.” He was referring to my grandmother who had been Emily and was rather critical of everything or at least she was when Martin knew her. Earlier she had been much sweeter.

“Emma?” I suggested.

Martin pulled a face. “Perhaps,” he said. “It’s a bit common, though, isn’t it?”

I shrugged.

“Kieran for a boy,” I said.

“Okay,” said Martin.

Bump, bump, bump.

“Ouch,” I said. “That really hurts!”

“What?” asked Martin, looking really worried.

“Madam, here,” I said. “It must be a girl. She doesn’t like being referred to as a boy and she doesn’t like the name Emily.”

The bumping stopped. Perhaps those rather drunken gentleman had been right. I’d been at an international conference the week before, the last week I was allowed to fly. On the final evening there had been free beer, and someone had started a book on the gender of the baby. They’d even done that trick with a strand of my hair and my wedding ring to work out whether it was going to be a boy or a girl. Odds were on it being a girl. It didn’t look as if they were going to get much beer money.