He took another deep breath. He looked down at the table. ‘It was a miscarriage. Before it even really started. They said that at the hospital, you know. That we shouldn’t think of it as a baby. It wasn’t, but to us, it was. Or to me, anyway. Even though it hadn’t been planned, and I’d felt sick when she first told me. You see, that sick so quickly changed to excitement. And it was like I could see his face.’ Lorcan smiled sadly. ‘I felt that it was a boy, you know. Maybe that was wishful thinking on my part, although I’d have loved a little girl just as much. But it was like I could see our lives stretch out in front of me. Sophie and I, and our baby, and Scraps. I could see weekend kickabouts at the park, tiny football kits. Long walks on a Sunday and a pub lunch, the baby sleeping in the pram while Soph and I chatted. I saw first days at school, and teaching him to shave and all that stuff. The kind of stuff people don’t think men think about.’

He was speaking all the words that had run through her mind when she had come home from Spain, cowed by her experience. Words that she has never allowed herself to say out loud, afraid it would break her entirely if she did.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Jo stuttered, her voice thick with emotion.

Lorcan shrugged his shoulders. ‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I never understand why we tell people we’re sorry. As if we did something wrong…’ He paused for a moment.

‘It was awful,’ Jo said, and it wasn’t a question but a statement of understanding.

‘It was. For Sophie more than me – well, physically at least for her. It was early enough on so we were sent home to wait it out. It had been too early to see a heartbeat or to have any confirmation this had been real, apart from one of those pregnancy-testing sticks. Sophie was in pain, you know. I felt useless, because I was. I couldn’t take it away from her. I brought her painkillers and a hot-water bottle, but that just made her cry more. Because I’d do that when she got her period and this wasn’t a period.’

Jo realised that tears had started to slide down her cheeks. For Sophie, who she didn’t know. For Lorcan, who had tried his best. For Colm, who didn’t know what it was like to love a little person who had never had the chance to feel their own heartbeat. And for herself. She had felt the pain Sophie had. That physical ache and sense of helplessness, and she’d have done anything she could to have someone like Lorcan by her side at the time. Someone who tried to make it less horrific for her.