As if Oscar was reading my mind, Albie’s door opened a little and a shaft of light from the landing created an orange pathway on the carpet. Then Oscar’s tall shadow filled it as he stood in the doorway. He had two glasses of red wine in his hands. His silhouette looked big, strong, sensible, and dependable; all the qualities I loved in him.

‘What’s going on, Lucy?’ he asked solemnly. ‘I can see you’re not yourself. Please talk to me.’

I didn’t reply. Where would I even start?

Oscar came and sat next to me in the dark. He passed me a glass of wine and I took a much-needed sip.

‘I never should have joined that Baby Group – you were right,’ I muttered after a few seconds passed. ‘It’s brought back memories I wanted to forget.’

‘Memories?’ he asked. ‘What do you mean?’

We sat there in the shadows, talking for the next hour – somehow it was easier that way, close to the baby at the centre of all this, without the intensity of Oscar being able to read every expression on my face.

I told him about the night with Jason, and about what he had told me in the morning.

Oscar took it all absolutely calmly, saying, ‘Keep going’, in appropriate places.

Of course, I spared him the hottest parts, about how electrifying the sex had been and how consumed with lust I was from the first touch of Jason’s hand on my leg. But I also told him how things had ended. How Jason had revealed he knew I’d had an abortion all those years ago – that he’d known at the time, and just hadn’t told me. How I felt that if we had talked, maybe I wouldn’t have felt pressured to go ahead with it. How, after dropping that bombshell, he had left, only to completely blank me two weeks later when I tried to reach him on text to tell him I was pregnant. How he had blocked me from all of his social media accounts, callously cut me off. How it stung then, and that it still hurt me now.

‘So how did you find out about The Baby Group?’ Oscar asked. ‘If Jason had cut you off?’

‘I’d been googling him and found a photo on the society pages of a Hong Kong online magazine. It was a wedding photo of a couple who were obviously somebodies in Asia, and on either side of them, so the caption said, were friends Jason Moore and girlfriend, Aisha Chandra. I recognized him immediately. And I knew Aisha was of Indian descent, so there was no doubt it was her and her surname gave me another name to search for. Her Instagram account appeared immediately: “Aisha Chandra. Children’s book illustrator and lover of vintage finds, London”. It had to be her. Then I saw the latest photo on her grid.’ My heart leapt into my mouth at the memory. ‘A photo of a baby scan, and underneath it the caption: “Baby Moore, due early June”. From there, it wasn’t hard to find which Baby Group they had joined because I knew they lived in Clapham. At least now I knew why Jason cut me off. He must have panicked.’ I paused for a moment; revisiting all this was painful. ‘I’ll understand if you need to go somewhere,’ I said hesitantly, turning to Oscar. ‘I won’t blame you if you want to leave.’