Here is the framed photograph of the garden of the house in Cornwall where Nathan proposed, each blade of grass frosted, whole.

Here is the bookshelf along one wall, filled with poetry, with novels, with Nathan’s journals. (She, who grew up in a house with no books, can spend minutes standing in front of it, letting it speak back to her, the spines arranged by author, alphabetical: Adichie, Eliot, Forster, Woolf.)

Here is the rug they bought on a weekend in Marrakech. The night shopping in the souks, the haggling and then the final capitulation, and the exorbitant price to take it back on the plane. But it is beautiful, Beni Ourain—from the Atlas Mountains. A thick cream wool. It will bring you fortune said the seller, tracing the diamond patterns with his fingers, and was it her imagination or did his glance flicker to her womb as she took out her credit card and paid?

Here is the sofa they bought from a warehouse in Chelsea, and chose for its low mid-century lines, its dark slate-blue linen. The sofa on which she sat, two weeks after the first round of IVF, holding her test—the jubilation of those two clear pink lines. The sofa on which she sat cocooned in blankets while Nathan cooked—soups and risottos for his pregnant wife.

Here, a little way down the hall, is the bathroom. The white beveled tiles. The lotions in their plain brown glass jars. Here is the place where, three weeks after that test, she writhed in pain, where after a day of bleeding, she passed a clot. The fibrous sac that held the baby that did not live. That she and Nathan did not know how to dispose of. That, in the end, they took to the park late at night, where they dug a hole and buried it deep in the ground.

But wait, here—come, walk this way, down the hall to a little room—open the door and stand within, watch how the light falls, softer here, more diffused. This room waits, nothing in it but a quiet sense of expectation.

This is the house that Hannah built, three floors above London, floating in light.

THE STEW IS cooked and bubbling on the stove. There is crusty bread and a bowl of aioli. A bottle of white stands glistening on the counter and two glasses wait beside it. Hannah takes parsley and chops it, adding lemon and salt. She hears the front door and then Nathan is behind her, his hand on her back. “Hey.” She turns to him—a brief kiss on the mouth. “How’s the chapter going?” When he has writing to finish, her husband takes himself to the British Library. He says he likes it there on weekends, when the Reading Rooms are quieter; says he finds it easier to work there than at home.

“Oh, you know. Getting there, slowly.”