Paulette has to get two buses to work, the 61 into town, then a walk across Cathedral Green to catch the number 18 going north. Right near the bus stop, there’s a new children’s shop with pushchairs and cots in the window. She checks her watch. Ten minutes before the bus comes. She walks up to the front door and pushes it open.

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It smells fresh, clean and new. There’s a choice of three different prams and a white highchair with a row of coloured balls on a loop that fixes on to the front, and then, when you want to feed the baby, it moves aside. Not too expensive neither. At the back of the shop there’s a little pretend baby’s bedroom with an ABC rug and a rocking chair with a footstool for nursing the baby. And in the centre of the room there’s a cot that becomes a little bed when you pull the levers on the side. Paulette’s never seen anything like it. A cot for a baby and bed for your boy or girl all in one.…