I love you, he says. We’ve got each other.

We’ve got each other, she repeats, and it’s true, they have, and until a fortnight ago their life, their funny, poky little 107flat, their terrace in the evenings, seemed more than enough, more than they deserved.

Two forty, the eighth floor (lift core nine). The row of moulded chairs, bolted to the floor. The window out onto the city, the dozens of cranes, swinging over building sites in restless benediction. A memory: the P7 trip to Edinburgh, and the Camera Obscura where, with clever mirrors and a little piece of card, you could pick up a tiny beetling vehicle far below, watch it crawl over your card then fall abruptly off. People too: scoop them up like ants and pretend to blow them away and watch them scurry on, oblivious. She goes to tell Adjo this, then stops. There is no privacy here. Even when you try not to listen, you can’t but overhear. We went for a private scan and they couldn’t find a heartbeat, they said to come straight in. Please, you have to see me now. Two fifty, three o’clock. A couple emerge from the side room, ashen-faced. He can’t work out how to open the main door, the right button to press, which way to push or pull, and she just stands there, slowly adjusting her hijab.

Five past, ten past, quarter past, half. Time isn’t moving right. They’ve been here hours, a lifetime. Her name is finally called. The whole room looks at her as she stands up, then furtively tries not to look at all.

The brisk, matter-of-fact, not-unkind questions. The history, the dates. And any more bleeding?

A little. 108

Bright red?

More sort of … rusty.

Right then, let’s have a look.

And then the intimate, impersonal violation of it.

You’re doing great, the nurse says, and she replies automatically, as if it’s a compliment, Thank you.

Adjo sits beside her, holding her hand, and his hand is too clammy, or hers is. The screen turned mostly away. The technician with her left hand tapping, bright acrylic fingernails. This is unbearable. Tears, wretched self-pity, swell up in her eyes. The technician adjusts the probe and the screen jumps, flickers.

Ok, she finally says.

Online, everyone seems fluent in this new language, a vocabulary of endometrial thickness and serial beta bloods, of hCG and IU/I and foetal poles. Their sentences rattle with acronyms: pg, mc, LH surge. Dpo, hpt, opk. Clomid, Metformin, doses, dates. Appeals for help: PLEASE i need your success stories, please!

As they left, the nurse had said: It could be earlier than you think, or a sign that things aren’t viable. We’ll wait a week, and take the bloods again.

What else did she say? I have to say, the numbers don’t look good.