He leans forward, catching her wrist in his hand. She looks down, sees his fingers, the nails trimmed haphazardly, feels a pulse in her heart, her wrist, her crotch.

“I miss that,” he says.

Call what you see.

You want me.

“Who?” she says to him, looking back up into his face. “Who am I? To you?”

“You’re beautiful, you’re bright, you’re wild, Lissa. You’re real.” And he lifts his hands to her face, her face towards his, brings his lips to hers.

The surprise.

The lack of surprise.

Her lips parting for him. The taste of his tongue.

“Sorry,” he says, pulling away.

“No,” she says.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s OK. It didn’t happen.”

“Hannah,” he says, and his voice is strangled.

“It didn’t happen, Nath.”

He passes his hand over his face. “Not that. It’s just—she wants to do it again. The IVF. Wants to go to another clinic. On Harley Street.”

“That must be thousands.”

“And the rest.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” And the despair is back, cloaking him. He looks up at her. “What would you do?”

“Oh god.” She laughs softly. “Don’t ask me.”

“But I am,” he says. “I am asking you. You’re the first person I’ve managed to talk to about this. You don’t know how good it is to talk. Liss. Tell me,” he pleads. “Please. What would you do?”

“I wouldn’t do it,” she says, pulling her sweater around her, staring out at the rain-washed street. “I’d say no.”

Hannah

THEY COME OUT OF THE TUBE AT REGENT’S PARK, WALK PAST the cream colonnaded buildings, then along Marylebone Road before turning onto Harley Street. She walks quickly, as if by hurrying—by ushering Nathan past these mini mansions, past the huge cars disgorging skinny, headscarfed women, past the elderly ladies carrying their tiny dogs in their arms—he might not register where they are.

She rings the bell of a three-story house, mercifully slightly less grand than those that surround it. The buzzer admits them and they step into a black-and-white flagged entrance hall, where pictures of smiling babies decorate the walls and the slim curve of a Regency staircase stretches upwards towards the light. They give their names and are shown into a waiting room the size of their flat. Squashy sofas face each other over angular tables and magazines are arranged in tight-cornered piles. A couple sits on a sofa, twenty feet away. They eye Hannah and Nathan across the room.

Nathan sits, his ankle crossed over his knee. His sneakers are scuffed. His leg jiggles on the deep-pile carpet. In the corner, a coffee machine gurgles. “I’m going to get a drink,” he says, jumping up again. “You want one?”