She does not want this crack of light, this light which is sharpening, filling the room, which carries the future within it, cold and hard and unforgiving. She wants to pull Nathan in here, close the door behind them. Lie down in the darkness together with this baby on this bed.

“It’s Cate. She’s left. She’s pretty drunk. I think she might need to be found.”

Hannah rouses herself and comes to stand, then follows him slowly back down the stairs, and out blinking into the living room, where people are scattered in small groups.

“I’ll go and look for her,” she says.

“Let her cool off,” says the man called Mark. “She’s pissed. She could use the air.”

Hannah takes her coat.

“You want me to come?” Nathan says.

“No, you stay.”

Outside it is freezing, and she has no idea where to go. She calls Cate’s name—her voice is thin and high. She traces their steps back out to the road, heels percussive on the hard ground, comes to a deserted supermarket parking lot. She feels vulnerable out here, in these heels, in this dress. “Cate?” she calls. The road is busy, even at this time of night. She has a sudden terrible thought, and she starts to run. “Cate?” she calls. “Cate?”

And then she sees her. She is standing on a small humpbacked bridge, leaning out over the river. “Cate?” she calls.

Hannah is breathless when she reaches her.

Cate’s eyes, when she lifts her gaze, are hard and bright. “I’m leaving,” she says. Beneath the bridge the cold black water moves.

“Cate,” says Hannah, taking her arm. “You’re drunk. It’ll seem different in the morning. I promise.”

“Don’t fucking silence me. Do you know what you’re like, Hannah? You’re just like all the rest of them. Never mind that you feel like shit. Never mind that they cut you open and didn’t tell you why. You have a healthy baby. Take some fucking pills and shut up. You don’t want to hear the truth.”

And Hannah feels her own cold fury growing now. “What truth? What truth, Cate? Come on. Tell me.”

Cate shakes her head, mutinous.

“Well, I’ll tell you my truth, can I?” Hannah speaks quickly, clearly now. “My husband is leaving me. Because we can’t have a child. I lost a child. I had a miscarriage. Have you ever had one of those?”

Cate’s eyes in the darkness, all pupil now.