When I got back from the hospital, I went down to Art’s studio in the basement. I put down my carrier bag. It was full of all the banned cheeses: Brie, blue. I’d bought pâté. Salami. All the fuck-yous to the Unborn.

‘Hey,’ he said softly, turning round from his computer and coming over to me. He hugged me like I was made of glass. ‘Are you okay? What did they say?’

‘Bizarrely they said there was so little of the hormone in me it was as though I’d never been pregnant. So I don’t know whether it hadn’t grown much or what.’

His computer switched to sleep mode. Photos of me in different locations appeared in a slow montage. Me feeding a horse. Me eating an ice cream. Me pretending to like the sea. Smiling, always smiling. Smiling on demand. Being fine and nice about it all.

‘Can I get you anything? Come on, come upstairs.’

He put me on the sofa, under a blanket.

‘I’m still bleeding quite a lot.’

‘Let me make you some tea and toast.’

While he was in the kitchen I pulled off a big hunk of Brie and rammed it down my throat.

He came back in and put the tea and toast down.

I said, ‘Thank you.’

He said, ‘Listen, babes, I’ve been thinking.’

I looked at him.

He said: ‘I’m not ready to do this. Start a family. I’m not sure it’s for me.’

I thought of the condoms in his leather toiletry bag, batched in bright foil squares, like confectionery. The way I’d obsessed over them in the early days. Resisted counting them each time he visited. We were heading there again. Beating a retreat. To distances. To speculation. To protection.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So why did you do this with me for so long? Were you just playing along?’

‘No,’ he said – and then, seeing that was unsatisfactory, added, ‘My therapist understands. It’s a psychological thing. I also need a lot of artistic headspace.’

Art’s therapist was a piece of work. They bought each other gifts. He had Tony Soprano aspirations. She loved treating a famous photographer. It was all very bad practice. I imagined her like Sharon Stone, sitting waiting for him in a desk chair, legs open, the dark recess of her skirt holding crotchless panties. Early on, he told me that she had advised him to see an older woman, that I was too young for him (I was two years older than him). She, on the other hand, was conveniently a whole ten years older. ‘Your therapist has an agenda.’