‘But you’ll be the person who got me pregnant. And gave away their child.’

‘I can live with that. I can’t live with losing you.’

‘I don’t want you to be making that choice.’

‘Tough. I made it. Even if you try and say you don’t know who the father is, now they’ll think you’re lying. To protect me.’

‘I can come clean. Tell them what happened to me …’

‘I don’t want you to have to do that. And you don’t want to do that. This way’s better. Let them blame me. Your dad can hate me. I mean, I don’t give a fuck if he does. I can take it.’

‘Is your nose broken?’

‘I don’t think so.’ He smiles at her. ‘No bad thing if it is. I’ll look like a tough guy. The kind who strangles thugs with his cardigan if they make trouble.’

‘This thing you’re saying, it … it isn’t something we can take back.’

‘I know that.’

‘Adam, your mum …’

‘My mum will be nice about it.’

‘It’s not just me people will look at differently.’

‘I know. Becky, I’ve thought all that through. It’s so much less shit for men. So this is something I can do. Let me do it.’

‘My dad will be on at you about everything.’

‘Do they know you’re going to put the baby up for adoption?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right, so this is only for a little bit. Just let me be the one whose fault it is. If that’s what your dad needs, to stop blaming you. It’s easy.’

How is any of this easy? Still, she feels something lift, fractionally. She tests the idea of killing herself: the idea she has run toward and then pushed away for weeks now. And she sees that he is right: she finds that she cannot bear the unfairness of it, as she pictures Adam castigated, blamed, and screamed at for destroying her.

He has trapped her into staying alive. And she hopes against hope now, that maybe he is right about the consequences of that: that someday she will find all this behind her and be glad of her existence again.

She feels the kick against the side of its soft balloon home and she finds herself wondering: does it know her heart?

It’s not like it’s uncomplicated.

When Adam’s parents come round with Adam, and they sit, the six of them, Becky comes close to breaking.

They are so kind. They offer to help out with expenses, like post-natal care. They offer to contribute to Becky getting some help with therapy, if she wants it.

Adam’s mum suggests, tearfully, that maybe if Becky changes her mind and decides to keep it then they will help, they’d love it, really they would …

‘Mum,’ says Adam sharply.