I returned to the bed. I didn’t want him to catch me listening. The creaks on the stairs told me he was coming up, and I pulled the bed sheets up to my chin as some sort of protection and waited. He gently pushed the door – I don’t know if it registered with him that it was ajar – and slipped into the room.

‘Oh, you’re awake,’ he said, sitting on the bed and taking my wrist. He laid his hand on my forehead. ‘How are you feeling?’ As he bent over me, I smelled that sweet perfume on him. The one she had held out to me on her wrist that night at the party. Tabac Blond.

‘I don’t know. Numb.’

‘Do you remember what happened? Why you have been unwell?’

I blinked. The question was awful. ‘Of course I remember.’ And then I was furious. I don’t know where it came from but I could have torn my hair out with the rage. ‘Do you think I could forget that? What are you … Are you mad?’ As I started to shout, he stood up and retreated to the wall, but remained facing me. I threw back the covers and looked down at my stomach. I had half expected to see some sort of evidence there. But there was nothing, no record. The child had been and gone without a mark on this world other than in my mind. Nick too just stared at the place where I would soon have been swelling.

‘Do you want some time alone?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ I couldn’t look at him. ‘Was that Lorelei?’

He hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘Why was she here?’ I was so bitter.

‘Just so –’

‘I don’t want her here again!’ All the anger I had was swept up into him.

‘She just came to collect something for Hazel.’ I picked up a wooden-framed photograph from the table and threw it against the wall. The frame broke in two and dropped to the ground. I half recognized an image of the two of us on a day out. There was a long pause. ‘Please don’t do that, my darling,’ he said. ‘You nearly hit me. We’ll get through this. I promise.’

I wanted desperately to believe him, but my mind was echoing with a thought that I knew was unfair but I couldn’t put away from me: If you had taken me home when I told you I was ill, I might not have lost the baby.

14