Would I have left it this long to take a test if Jack had been alive? Or would I have told him immediately, as soon as my period didn’t show up? It would be sudden to hit this milestone, but it’s one I don’t doubt we were heading towards. I’m thirty-six – time’s not on my side. So the serious baby chat would’ve taken place next year, for sure. What a luxury that seems like now; next year with Jack. Confidently expected; nailed-down impossible.

I shower, pull on a tight black t-shirt and throw the cotton rag I refer to as my ‘holiday’ dress – the one I’d worn endlessly in Thailand – over my head. I finish off my summer look with some chunky beads and a hint of bright-red lipstick. I’m ready. And what’s more, I’m motivated.

The flat’s a mess, though. An empty pizza box is tossed on the kitchen floor, too big to fit into the recycling bin. I imagine Jack in the kitchen, sulking that the only pieces of bread left by the toaster are the crusts. I make a mental note to grab a loaf while I’m out, too. I grab my keys from the blue Marrakech dish, and the doorbell rings.

‘Chloe,’ Trish Carmichael says, elongating the second half of my name and flashing her teeth into a plastic smile. ‘Nice to see you again.’

She looks like Patricia from the telly today: pastel makeup; dangly earrings; hair spiked, ready for business. She’s not wearing one of her panel-show suit jackets, though – they always look a size too big – but rather she’s in her casual wear, a pashmina draped with finesse around her small frame, her specs on a gold chain. John’s not with her.

‘Wow, Mrs – erm – Trish. Hi.’

‘I was going to call,’ she tells me. ‘But I thought, well—’

‘You have a key, so what’s the point?’

Trish clicks, points at me and winks. ‘Exactly.’

I hold the door open and she walks straight into the kitchen and tosses her orange Michael Kors handbag onto the breakfast bar. She slowly twirls around, taking it all in, her fingers re-spiking her hair.

‘Thanks for keeping an eye on this place,’ she says.

‘Sorry about the pizza box,’ I say, pointing it out.

‘Oh, we all have to eat, Chloe, don’t we?’ Trish laughs, a punchline to a joke I misheard.

If Jack could just show up, you know, in an alternate universe from the one Trish and I are enduring, then I wouldn’t be the Chloe who Trish has convinced herself I am. I’d be more important.

‘How are you?’ I ask, instantly wondering if I’ve said the wrong thing.