‘I’m just saying that it would always be loved. I’m sorry, but I have to say that. But I won’t say it again. I’m sorry.’

‘Becky’s going to university,’ says Bill. Becky tries to picture herself in Freshers’ Week, running riot with her new friends in student halls. But she can’t see it. There is no future where she is so light, and free, and rootless.

All she sees is Scott’s expression as she steps back from him and he lets go of her wrist. As she readjusts her jeans. Pure disappointment. Had he planned everything from that moment onwards? Was it always going to be her? Would the same have happened with another girl in that room or was it something about her?

‘What are the arrangements for the birth?’ asks Adam’s father. He has brought a notebook with him so that he can capture any to-do items that he agrees to take on. He volunteers to drive Becky and Adam in, when it’s time.

‘You don’t have to be there,’ says Becky to Adam, and she means it. In fact, she wants him not to be there. She wants nobody there.

‘I’ll be there,’ says Adam.

‘Fucking right you will,’ says Bill.

‘I’ll give you all my mobile number then,’ says Adam’s dad. ‘I read that women often go into labour at night, so … I’ll bear that in mind.’

‘We’ve cleared the diary,’ says Adam’s mum, blinking back tears. She wants to ask: Can I see the baby? Can I hold it? Can I take it home? When it looks like my son, can I refuse to let anyone take it away from us? And instead, she looks down at her lap.

Two weeks before the baby is due, Bill leaves his family.

One morning, the three of them are sitting round the kitchen table, plates of burnt toast and cups of cold tea in front of them.

Janette leaves the room and comes back in brandishing a thin cardboard box. Janette has spent money on an expensive cream for stretch marks. She thinks it will gee everyone up.

‘It’ll help her get back to normal,’ she says.

Bill stares at the receipt. ‘Forty quid? For that?’

‘It’s a good one. We want her to have a good one, don’t we?’

He goes upstairs and Janette calls after him, ‘I’m not taking it back. And anyway, you’ve already taken the top off, so I bloody can’t.’

Becky wishes the ground would swallow her up. She wonders if she could move into Adam’s parents’ house, at least just until this is all over with. And then she remembers the look on his mum’s face and that love will ruin everything. Love will persuade and cajole her to keep the criminal’s baby and turn one blacked-out moment into the rest of her life.