The pains started coming every minute, and my mother went barmy, and a lot of people ran in and started telling her to push. I sat in the far corner at the head end of my mother and tried not to look at the other end where doctors and nurses were clanging about with metal things. My mother was puffing and panting just like she does at Christmas when she’s blowing balloons up. Soon everyone was shouting, ‘Push, Mrs Mole, push!’ My mother pushed until her eyes nearly popped out. ‘Harder,’ they shouted. My mother went a bit barmy again, and the doctor said, ‘I can see the baby’s head!’

I tried to escape then but my mother said, ‘Where’s Adrian? I want Adrian.’

I didn’t like to leave her alone with strangers, so I said I’d stay. I stared at the beauty spot on my mother’s cheek for the next three minutes, and I didn’t look up, until I heard the black nurse say, ‘Pant for the head.’

At 5.19 p.m. my mother had a barmy moment; then the doctor and nurses gave a sort of loud sigh, and I looked up and saw a skinny purple thing hanging upside down. It was covered in white stuff.

‘It’s a lovely little girl, Mrs Mole,’ the doctor said, and he looked dead pleased, as if he were the father himself.

My mother said, ‘Is she all there?’

The doctor said, ‘Toes and fingers, all correct.’

The baby started crying in a crotchety, bad-tempered way, and she was put on my mother’s flatter belly. My mother looked at her as if she was a precious piece of jewellery or something. I congratulated my mother and she said, ‘Say hello to your sister.’

The doctor stared at me in my mask and gown and said, ‘Aren’t you Mr Mole, the baby’s father?’

I said, ‘No, I’m Master Mole the baby’s brother.’

‘Then you have broken every rule in this hospital,’ he said. ‘I must ask you to leave. You could be rife with childish infectious diseases.’

So, while they stood around waiting for something called the placenta to emerge, I went into the corridor. I found a waiting-room full of worried-looking men, smoking and talking about cars.

(To be continued after sleep.)