‘OK.’ Jacob breathes in, sharply. ‘Well … I’ve changed my mind then. I want to be with you. I don’t care about anything else. I am willing to miss out on the other things.’ Jacob’s eyes are welling up.

‘No, Jacob.’ I push back my stool. I replay what Zeta said to me not long ago: Remember Olive, it’s cruel to be kind. ‘It’s over. We’re over. I don’t want to be with you any more.’ I steel myself. ‘I’m not in love with you any more. Babies or no babies. It’s right that we end this now.’

I fight against every natural impulse in my body to kiss him and just forget it all – pretend it was just another silly argument. But, for once, it wasn’t a silly argument. For the first time ever, we were both really hurting one another. It would be pointless to go back to normal; we’d only find ourselves in another café a few months down the line, putting ourselves through all this again.

‘You know what, Olive. I will probably look back on this moment one day in the future and love you even more for having the strength to do something I couldn’t,’ he said, tears balancing on the ridges of his eyes. One falls then, and starts to gently trickle down the side of his stubbly face. I lift my hand instinctively and touch his arm and then wonder if this will be the last time I ever touch him.

He knows that this needs to happen, and so do I. Our path together has reached a dead end. We both have a new chapter to embark on, but the beginning of it will feel as if we’re being dragged through a forest of thorns, jagged rocks and stinging nettles, bleeding everywhere for everyone to see.

The waitress comes over again and takes our empty glasses, placing a voucher for a free coffee on the table. I put it in my pocket. Jacob politely packs up his bag, pays the bill, and then gets up to leave.

‘Right.’ He coughs, straightening his shirt, like he’s trying to rid himself of any last remnant of emotion. ‘I’d best be off then.’ A cold goodbye. A hard goodbye. A stranger’s goodbye.

And, before I have a chance to respond, he walks right out the door. I feel physically sick; it feels finally, in some way, finished.

When I get back to my flat, I stop outside Dorothy’s door and rummage inside my handbag for a pen. I pull out an old biro and lean the voucher against my leg to write on it: ‘For your next cappuccino, Olive x’. I post it through Dorothy Gray’s bright orange letterbox.

‘Finding child-free friends does get harder as I get older.’

Emilia, 36

15

I walk into my kitchen absolutely exhausted from staying up all night on my laptop, deep-diving into online hate forums where ‘mum bloggers’ rip each other to shreds. All for my article at work, of course. I’m trying to understand why these parenting forums encourage so much competitiveness and insecurity, and whether or not they alienate child-free women (or indeed reinforce their decision not to get involved!). I went down so many rabbit holes and woke up with random scribbles in my notepad that now don’t make much sense.