‘As if you’re pregnant?’ He nodded. ‘And if a woman stopped taking it after a while, would her periods return?’

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘I expect so.’

‘And would the first be heavier than usual?’

‘It is probable,’ he said.

My God. What had happened to me?

I stood up and walked to the bed. I placed my fists on it and leaned on them, my head down, my back to him. ‘And what is it used for? Its purpose?’

He fidgeted and glanced at the battered door. ‘It is a little … something there is an argument about. The effect of halting the menses – your periods – means it can be used as a contraceptive. Something to prevent pregnancy.’ He looked at me meaningfully. ‘Of course, no doctor would prescribe such a drug. It would be disloyal. To the Party.’

On the wall outside was a poster of Louise Archer, mother of six Pioneers, bouncing a child on her knee. OUR STATE RELIES ON ITS CHILDREN, ran the slogan.

‘Do people supply this drug? On the black market?’ I asked. He hesitated. ‘Please tell me.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Doctors talk. I have heard of it happening. I do not know if what I heard is true.’

When the voice on the telephone had asked Nick if he could get more of it, Nick had said he had been testing it on a ‘private patient’. ‘It works as predicted. Now it’s time for them to start the course again,’ he had said.

‘Would it be expensive?’

‘I really could not –’

‘It would, wouldn’t it?’

‘I imagine so.’

Expensive. Lucrative. So this was surely the basis of the new ‘big orders’ that Lorelei had told Rachel to expect. It was what they had fought about.

‘What does it look like?’

‘What does it … I do not know. I have never seen it,’ he said.

‘Guess.’

He sighed. ‘A pill, a liquid, it is hard to say.’

‘Would it taste of anything?’

‘I really do not know. Maybe. Probably not. Mrs Cawson, is there something that you want to say to me?’

My throat was hoarse. ‘No,’ I managed to whisper.

Hardly able to think, I stumbled out of the room. My head spun with thoughts and images. I turned at random down corridors and through archways. In the end, I looked up and found myself in an unfamiliar corridor. There was a door beside me with the sound of voices behind it. I didn’t know where I was and I needed someone to help me, so I pushed on the door and it swung open. The sight that greeted me made the ground shake underneath my feet.