How could he? Jason had sought me out and slept with me knowing such a big secret – a secret that had haunted me for the past two decades. I tried to blink back the tears from the corners of my eyes, but they continued to fall. It felt like they might never stop, dripping onto the pillow no matter how fast I tried to wipe them away. I felt so used.

I must have cried myself to sleep, because when I woke up again, I was lying diagonally across my bed, and there was a streak of light across the duvet as daylight leaked from the gap in the middle of the curtains. I guessed it must be around eight. My head was throbbing. I was alone. My heart unbearably heavy. The events of this morning filtered back into my consciousness.

It must have been soon after sunrise that he left and the weight of his flesh moved away from my bed, his hands ceased to hold me, his gaze gone. All that was left in his wake was a shattered memory of what might have been.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck, it was today. The Day. The one I had been counting down to for the last year of my life. I held my stomach, lacing my fingers across my middle and tears prickled at my eyes again. Had I completely ruined my chances by having sex last night? Sex that I could barely remember because I was so drunk, and now bitterly regretted? My head hurt with the vice-like grip of a grade A hangover. My mouth was dry.

I must have sobbed for at least the next ten minutes.

Slowly, my breathing began to steady and I collected my thoughts again. I had to think straight. My appointment at the clinic was at two this afternoon, and now it was still early. There was time to get myself together. I just needed more sleep. I’d weathered hangovers worse than this before – sleep and water would help. I knew I couldn’t let myself miss this appointment.

I tried to placate the nagging voice in my head with the reasoning that so many women were well and truly trolleyed when they got knocked up – and many more only realized they were pregnant after weeks of getting pissed and having sex. In fact they didn’t even know for sure when they conceived. And they went on to have perfectly healthy babies. Having sex wasn’t a crime anyway. Could it really be that bad? Perhaps I had doubled my chances of a successful pregnancy. Maybe there was a silver lining.

For the next hour I drifted in and out of consciousness, desperate to shake off the pounding headache, but refraining from taking any medication because of the slim chance that I might be pregnant – or that I could be pregnant again by the end of today.

I tried to piece the evening together. I was absolutely certain we didn’t use any contraception because I had none in this flat. Could I be pregnant? Should I still go ahead with the transfer? My hand hovered over my phone as I considered calling Katie. She would be shocked yet intrigued to know that I’d seen Jason after all that time. It could have been a cute, romantic story if it wasn’t such a disaster at the same time. I decided against it – it all felt too emotionally raw – and instead raced out of bed to find my laptop.