Tess is working but, really, she’s just watching Beth, making sure she doesn’t run. Lenny is outside, playing football with Frankie. Oblivious. Maud is sitting by her feet, her nose on Beth’s shoe. Beth scoops Maud up and holds her close, grateful that she’s a dog and will never know what Beth is really like. Maud knows, though. Of course she does, and she always did. She didn’t judge her then and she doesn’t judge her now. Dogs love unconditionally, not because they don’t understand life, but because they understand it the best.

Beth pulls at a piece of skin on her wedding-ring finger, near the nail. It hurts enough to make her say, ‘I had a miscarriage, after Lenny.’ Tess doesn’t look up, but her pen stops moving.

‘Lenny was so perfect. Ten fingers, ten toes. Do you know how lucky that is? How often things can go wrong in pregnancy? First the twenty per cent chance of miscarriage. Then the background rate for birth defects. Then the risk of preeclampsia. Going into labour too early. Underdeveloped lungs. A complication giving birth, shoulder dystocia. Nuchal cord and birth asphyxia … Thirty-seven thousand billion chemical reactions take place per second in the human body. That’s without a baby growing inside it.’

Maud sighs heavily. She’d thought it might be something like this. Sorrow has a certain smell.

‘Greg wore me down. He kept on about how sad it would be for Lenny to be an only child and what if we died in an accident …’ Beth pinches her thigh, quick and hard. ‘When I stopped using birth control, I got pregnant straight away. The morning sickness was awful. The scans showed a healthy baby, but I knew it wasn’t. Lenny came along with us to watch. He was fascinated. He asked if that was what he had looked like too. He didn’t. The other baby looked like a prawn. It kicked and scratched at me. It wanted to get out.’

Beth looks out of the window, watching for cars, for the end. ‘It stopped moving at thirty-six weeks. I knew it was dead, but I didn’t tell Greg. I didn’t tell anyone. I knew there was no chance I could be lucky twice. I carried it for another week before the blood came. Greg rushed me in, thinking the baby could be saved, but I already knew. They offered to knock me out, but I wanted to give birth to it. I refused painkillers. I felt every second. He didn’t arrive easily and the doctors told me I could never have another baby, but I already knew that.’