Please help me find this book I borrowed from the library in 1990!

[FantasticButtocks]

Not much to go on, sorry...
It had a brightish blue cover.
No idea of author or title, but either the husband or the baby was called Stephen/Steven, think it might actually have been the baby. Don't think the marriage was great. The mother suffers with intense loneliness and depression pnd after the birth, husband not very supportive or maybe doesn't understand... but eventually she finds something that interests her, can't remember what, maybe she starts to study, and starts to feel more human again. She starts going out and about with the pram, and also getting into her subject, she sometimes reads on a bench in the park. One day when she's doing this, very absorbed, the unthinkable happens and her child drowns in the pond.
She blames herself. Her husband blames her.

Very grim and sad, I read it when I'd just given birth to my first child
I've looked for it often, without success and I'd be so grateful if anyone recognises it.
Thanks

Oh dear, no one knows

Wow what a book, I'm interested now..

Bumping as also interested.

That sounds a really uplifting read

Don't know the book but also interested now

I was reading the description thinking ‘why would you want to find it again?!’ And the ending was even worse!

Sorry I can’t help OP.

This is jogging a memory. Was it by joy fielding? I’m going on a search

I’m here

No, that’s See Jane run. This is going to bug me too

@FantasticButtocks That rings a bell with me - could it have been by Catherine Cookson?

No, it wasn't. It was a bit more literary I think, small writing cover was like the colours of a publishing house maybe, like Virago is green, but this was a kind of mumsnet blue...

Ooh I don't know... I'll look her up! Thanks 🙏

I know! Weird of me to want to find it, but it's been bugging me for years that a book I read 31 years ago should have had enough impact on me that I can still remember it. Shame that doesn't extend to either the title or the author

I want to read it

The juxtaposition of me reading it when I'd just had my first baby is maybe what made it unforgettable. I didn't know how the book would unfold but even once the main tragedy happened, I was compelled to keep reading. It was well written, but yes not in the least bit uplifting.

It was good.

Any more detail?
Like where, by the sea, in a town, out in the sticks, UK USA, Finland, Australia any tiny detail?
I actually recognise this, but it's so long ago and I read so many books back then.

I thought it might be Margaret Drabble, but I've just had a look and I can't find one of hers with that storyline.
Same kind of ball park as Drabble? A.S. Byatt? Penelope Lively? Woman who wrote Hotel du Lac whose name escapes me at this moment?

Anita Brookner was H du L.
Penelope Fitzgerald?

Fay Weldon? Monica Dickens? Beryl Bainbridge?

In the U.K. suburbia I think. Or I guess it could have been London or a large town, south east I think...somewhere where going to the park is normal, so not rural, not coastal. I remember not liking the husband, and she wasn't happy, and was overwhelmed by the expectations from him and I think his family, but not sure if that was her perception because of pnd, or whether they actually were overbearing.

Thanks, no neither of those.

Nope. It wasn't someone I've ever heard of iyswim

Meant to say thanks 😊 and I've read all those authors, loved Monica Dickens!

I so appreciate you all trying to help