My favourite family photo: ‘I can still feel my mother’s arm around my shoulder’

Emma with her mother and eledest son, Theo. Composite: Guardian Design; sqback/Getty Images; handout

This picture of my mother, me and my eldest son, Theo, was taken the morning after he was born in May 2002, in University College Hospital, London.

There are a lot of things I love about it. I love the fact my mother is exquisitely dressed – she’s wearing her pearls! She always looked very elegant at this time in her life and enjoyed clothes (we bought that suit on a day out together). I love the composition too – our three dark heads, faces in profile and the way our three hands are aligned. I love the miracle of my son’s intricate little shell of an ear, the nose (his dad’s) and lips (mine) still visible now in his 23-year-old face.