As the escalator ascended the side of the building, its transparent structure affording the best views as it raised them above the rooftops, it felt good to be out in Paris at dusk wearing a dress, and heels, even if they did keep catching in the cobbles. She rarely dressed up any more. No one knows what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes, she reminded herself, not even if they’re – she eyed Jules’s pumps – Alexander McQueen. She thought uneasily of the message she’d seen from Paul on Jules’s phone, before Jules had snatched it away: You can’t just ignore this Jules. Ignore what? Did Jules suspect Nina was pregnant? She’d always been so good at observing people. Had she been venting to Paul and he was telling her to ask Nina? It would explain why she was being so snappy, although surely that was the pressure of her upcoming IVF? But then what was Paul referring to? Was he exerting some sort of pressure on her? And were her friends missing it, putting her behaviour down to stress, missing what was really going on?

‘You don’t wear brands any more, do you?’ said Alice, a step below her on the escalator, her eyes travelling over Nina’s dress. She sounded almost alarmed. ‘You’re one of those cool no-label people in classic cuts and muted tones. Oh Lordy. You accept yourself, don’t you?’ Her tone was theatrical, but she was only part joking.

Nina grinned. ‘I don’t make them myself. I buy them in shops.’

‘Which shops? I need to know everything. I need to know how you look like this. Tell me your secrets!’ And Nina laughed along, her smile masking the sick sense of fear in her stomach at the idea of something, at that very moment, growing inside her body, altering it. It’s natural though, she reasoned to herself, and marvelled at that thought. She’d asked herself whether she wanted a baby hundreds, if not thousands, of times. How could she not, with the bombardment of pregnancy propaganda, launched like missiles as soon as a woman approached thirty, if not before? She’d wondered if something was wrong with her, that she didn’t experience the broodiness she witnessed in her friends. She thought it had a practical explanation: she’d been a teenager when her little sister Carey was born, had seen at close range the demands of a child, was alive to the reality of having a baby in a way that her friends weren’t. She expected that, when she was ready, maternal feelings would come. But her thirties were almost over and they simply hadn’t. If anything, she felt squeamish at the idea of something growing inside her, couldn’t help the horrible scene from Alien, a hand clawing its way out of Sigourney Weaver’s tummy, flashing in her mind (how many women of her generation had been traumatised by that movie as a child?). Yet here she was, pregnant, the bubbling of anxiety subsiding, assuaged by her own calming thoughts. It’s natural.