‘Was it okay?’

‘Let me tell you something I know from personal experience and from the work I do now: there is never an okay abortion. By which I mean: the procedure can go flawlessly. There can be little or no pain whatsoever. But the emotions it engenders, the way you as a woman have to live with it thereafter … even if it is wanted, even if you are having it for all the right reasons, even if it is the result of sexual assault … the fact is: it is an immense roller coaster to ride.’

‘And you felt …?’

‘Lost. Sad. Guilty. Self-Righteous. Tough. Proud. Crazed. Lonely. Full of regret. Determined. Feminist. Frightened. Wondering: did I act too precipitously? Knowing: it was the right decision for me. Knowing: I would always carry it with me.’

‘It still haunts you?’

‘On days when I regret the estrangement I have with Alison … when I think of the miscarriages I had some years after the abortion and that, after her birth, I couldn’t get pregnant again … yes, it can provoke a modicum of melancholy. Especially when I still find myself wondering in lonely moments: who would he or she be now? But another part of me does understand that I really wasn’t ready back then to make the vast commitment that being a parent involves. Who knows if the marriage would have been as happy as it largely was had we not had those first years for ourselves and ourselves alone?’

‘Is that why you now do the work that you do at the clinics? Because of what you’d lived through?’