But Oscar didn’t flinch. ‘This is quite a story. I want to know everything,’ he said.

‘You need to understand what it meant to me when I saw Jason on the Tube that day, and I’ll come onto that,’ I said, feeling calmer now that he wasn’t running to pack a bag. ‘I wouldn’t have approached him, it was him who came up to me, it was him who suggested we went to the pub, and it turned out that he had purposely found me that day. He must have followed me from work. We got really drunk; we were catching up on twenty years, and I can’t even really remember leaving the pub. But he came back to mine and… we got physical. It was consensual, of course. But he was really pissed – much drunker than me; he’d been doing shots on top of all the wine. I know we didn’t use any protection. Deep down I think it’s unlikely Jason is Albie’s father – even the IVF doctor told me the likelihood is ‘negligible’ – but on that night, you and I weren’t back together, and a bit of me still wanted to believe Jason was the only man who could get me pregnant.’

Oscar had finished his glass of wine while I was speaking, and now he took mine and drank that too. I carried on. Oscar had to know this, even if it meant the worst. In a strange way, however awful this was, it was almost a relief to be talking to him. The words were spilling out like water from a broken tap. I didn’t want any more secrets; I hated them.

‘In my mind, after Jason cut me off, I wanted to get him back,’ I said, between pauses to blow my nose and wipe the tears from my eyes. ‘I wanted to test him. As time moved on, I still couldn’t let it go. Then I had this twisted idea that if I joined the same Baby Group, when Jason saw me he would put two and two together and believe he had fathered my child. And then, in one way or another, it would ruin his marriage. I wanted him to feel some of the pain I had endured over the past two decades. At the time, when I signed up to the group, you and I had only been back together for a few months and deep down I was nervous about our future. You had made it very clear you didn’t want a family with me not so long before, and having a baby felt like the biggest need in my life. I had to prioritise myself and Albie ahead of anything.’

I slid my eyes towards Oscar to gauge his reaction. He looked shell-shocked.

‘Lucy, I hear you, but don’t try to blame me for what you did. You might have destroyed a family. Possibly two.’

That last comment really stung because he was clearly referring to us.