Art was antsy in the waiting room at Whipps Cross. He kept pacing and scratching and going outside. After half an hour or so, he asked me if he could leave and get back to his studio because he had a big job on for an advertising agency, which I already knew. There was no point the two of us staying, was there? I could see the logic in that. The proud part of me hustled forward inside and I heard myself say Okay. Because – also – (and I know I’m letting myself off the hook here, as well as being philosophical) how can you allow yourself to need someone who refuses to be needed? Don’t you just know that they are not right for you, that they don’t love you enough? The answer is in the question, is it not? They do not love you enough. If you make them stay, under duress, it changes the nature of any possible fulfilment. Best to turn off the need. Best to let the need do what it will, inside.

So, he left and I watched him go – through the revolving door, out into the sunshine. I think my heart broke in that moment. It snapped clean in two, like a biscuit; a brittle, little, domestic thing.

The room where I had the blood test was windowless, with grey walls. There was a single small bed with grey sheets and a plastic bucket in the corner. The heavy door swung shut with a clank. They took the blood out of my arm, which was funny because so much of it was falling out of me anyway. They took me for a scan.

‘There’s nothing there,’ the sonographer said. ‘There’s nothing there.’

Back out in the waiting room, I sat far apart from anyone else. There were pregnant people in there. It didn’t seem right, to put my particular curse amongst them.

Do you want to know the punchline?

As I was sitting there, bleeding, failed, confused, sad, mad as fuck, I glanced up and saw a man I’d got off with once on a drunken night out in Camden. He was sitting opposite with his very pregnant girlfriend. He was holding her hand. He recognised me and I couldn’t bear it, so do you know what I did? I pretended not to be me when he said hi. (This is a woman in her mid-thirties, remember. Pretending not to be herself. In that moment, I really think I wasn’t.) He probably thought I was crazy. And, in that moment, I suppose I was. I pulled out my phone and I started scrolling. I didn’t know what else to do, where else to go. I composed an email so as to compose myself.