Why had he imagined he and Rachel could keep it casual? In retrospect the signs were as well marked as a national sporting event. In her childhood: benign neglect practised by middle-class divorcees, firm believers in the resilience of children, and determinedly oblivious to the havoc wreaked on a Daddy’s girl by alternate weekend access. A part-time man would never be enough. Certainly she had claimed to desire only a bit of fun. But no surprise if that kicked-sore heart asked of every even half-kind man, Are you The One?

How could he have missed the signs? Unforgivable in a psychologist, even one whose clients are criminals. Yet he had missed them utterly, creating the inevitable moment when he must add himself to her catalogue of vanishing men; men who melted away as fast as snow on the hot hearth of her need for love. True, he had been young. Who is not a fool when they’re twenty? Easy to imagine you are in control of a fling; that you can keep lust and love in their separate corners. Only later had he learned that while you are imagining sexual positions, she may be planning the furniture.

An error he’d had to correct. He’d not wanted to hurt her. So he’d drunk more whisky than was wise, but insufficient to incapacitate; gone late on a Friday to Rachel’s sad lilac flat, decked out in its Tibetan singing bowls and dreamcatchers, to bruise her with the words It’s over. Had said them with a cup of her sweetened chai in his hands, afraid to insist on what they had christened Normalitea in case the shared joke bound them more tightly together. And then, within a quartered hour, reassured by the words It’s safe, he had made their bond permanent and parental.

What was to blame for the sowing of that unbearably precious life? As he left Rachel’s arms that night, cursing himself for his weakness, oblivious to the creation of a new human being, he made a list.

• Rachel’s tears. Expected, obvious, braced against. Yet still he’d felt unprepared for the full stomach sickness of watching so much water spill out of this woman at his simple utterance, a two-word curse he could easily lift.
• His mother. Who had taught him how to quiet a woman’s sobbing through affectionate acquiescence: Give Mummy a hug.
• His biology. That persistently hopeful body part nodding into life, Yes, yes.

Stupid of him. Now how could he say it again? He’d have to detach more gently. Give her less of himself, until she was sick of his shadow and shooed him away. Do the right thing, Finlay Logan; extract yourself slowly. But six weeks later the cage came down: the pink window, and her insistence she would go ahead and have the baby, no matter what.

Oh, he’d wanted to blame her. Had added to his list: