It is still early afternoon. They walk home, through the back streets, through the park, where leaves spin and fall in golden light. The flat has the calm, clandestine feeling of a midweek afternoon and they are playing hooky, together. They open the windows and let in the day, and then, for the first time in weeks, they lie on their bed and make love.

SHE WAKES EARLY. She has been dreaming, but she is not sure of what.

Beside her, Nathan sleeps on. She stands softly, pulls a blanket from the bed and goes into the kitchen, where she makes herself chamomile tea and then takes out her laptop, wondering if she should distract herself with a movie, but there is nothing she wants to watch. She clicks through some other pages, the IVF message boards—the thousands of women posting their questions, and the thousands who answer them—the pastel-hued sorority of anxiety and reassurance. She cannot bear these message boards and yet they call her, again and again with their siren, sister song.

After a while she casts the computer aside, takes the blanket and goes over to the window, looking out over the park to the city beyond. She thinks of those embryos, tinier than sight. How many of them have fertilized? How many of them pulse now with the smallest possible pulse of life? She wants to be near them. To walk back to the hospital and find the room where they lie and sit beside them. To watch over them in these long, small hours before the dawn. She is their mother, after all.

THEY CALL HER the next morning while she is at work. As soon as she sees the unknown number on her phone, she jumps up and takes the call in the corridor. “Eleven have fertilized,” the nurse tells her, and she feels her heart leap.

She tries to call Nathan, but his phone rings and rings and she gets his voicemail. A text comes through. In a meeting. All OK?

Eleven, she writes, and he sends back one word. Great!

Now she must wait.

THERE IS NO news the next day. Nathan is working late, and the flat feels large. She opens the door of the little room. This small room faces west, towards the hospital. She slides down to the carpet and sits there in silence. After a while she lifts her phone and calls her parents’ house. Her father answers.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Hannah. How’re you doing, love?”

“I’m good.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“How’re you?”

“Grand.”

Have they ever said more than this to each other on the phone?

“Hang on a sec, love. I’ll just get your mum.”

“Thanks, Dad.”