I was in the room when, at 12.33am on 7 September, my godson Nathaniel Thomas Riches was born.
It was one of the handful of moments in my life that I will never forget. Due to COVID-related restrictions on ‘visitors’, I wasn’t able to be there as his mother, my best friend of 25 years, Ellie’s labour was being induced.
It had felt entirely alien to leave her after I visited her in the hospital grounds when she was having relatively mild contractions four hours earlier.
I…