‘Margarites,’ says Adam’s dad, himself born half-Greek on his mother’s side. And bearing a name now, the baby adds another stitch. It is one thing to give away an unwanted child; it is another to give away Maisie.

Becky looks to Adam, willing him to be resolute where she fears she won’t be. Tell them all it’s time to go. Begin the arrangements. Strip away her name, gifted in a moment of weakness, of instinct. Take it back; it’s not hers. The child, the name, none belong to her. Take them away now.

Maisie opens her eyes and blinks. Her lips move. The beginnings of a cry. The baby is handed back to Becky and Becky looks at him, silently pleading: doesn’t he know what to do any more? He has been so certain.

Maisie latches onto Becky’s other breast and begins to feed again.

‘She’s going to be tall like you,’ says Adam.

Becky’s bones ache with exhaustion. She reaches for the last thing she can find.

‘Adam,’ she says. ‘Don’t you realize? If I keep her, you’ve got a daughter for the rest of your life.’

Let him decide.

If he can carry that weight, she’ll carry hers.

‘OK,’ says Adam.

‘No,’ says Becky. ‘Listen to what I’m saying.’

‘I know what you’re saying,’ he says. ‘If you want to keep her, I’ll try my best to be a good dad.’

It is incomprehensible, this offer. This stupid, kind, too-generous teenage boy. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s making her decide.

‘Keep her.’ It spills out of Janette, who has lost a husband but gained a granddaughter, and who finds that she cannot now lose her too.

‘We’ll help,’ says Adam’s father to Adam.

‘You don’t have to decide now,’ says Adam to Becky. ‘You can change your mind any time, if you think about it.’

The people from the agency tell Adam much the same. People change their minds all the time, he reports back. Sometimes forever, sometimes only for a few months.

‘She needs to smell your skin as well, son,’ says Adam’s dad, who has done all the reading, despite the situation. ‘That’s how she recognizes you to begin with.’ So Adam peels off his T-shirt and holds Maisie against his skinny chest. He rocks her gently, cradling her head and neck, kissing her cheek. It comes easily to him. Of course it does, thinks Becky. He’s generous with this as with everything else.

For a moment she thinks: look at everything that Scott is missing here. Maisie is hers alone. Scott doesn’t exist in the baby’s universe, and never will. Becky feels knowledge harden into the kind of secrets that are kept forever. She’ll never tell. And so Scott will never face justice. She cannot have one and keep the other.