I try to breathe it out. Must be the oestrogen I started taking yesterday, triggering Too Much Emotion. I guess it’s OK to be pissed off that I have to do this alone, when shitbags like that girl’s father take the gift of having children for granted.

When we get home, Bear drinks an entire bowlful of water before stretching out on the wooden floor, half his body in shade, half in a pool of sunlight.

I reach up to the very top of our shelves and take down the book that’s the best antidote to my negativity.

The Amazing Book of Us was our fertility counsellor’s idea: a book for the kids we hoped to have, explaining how they’d come into the world. We started treatment when Andrew went into remission, full of the optimism of those who have ‘sent cancer packing’. We kept the scan of my ripe ovaries and I drew smiling embryologists, and Andrew wrote about how love and science would come together to make our family.

But then he got sick again and I was too busy doing medical stuff to face working on the book. So he took it over completely. He was determined to keep going until he finished writing.

He died four days later.

Chapter 6: Dan

Tuesday 3 July

The workshop thermometer hit thirty degrees this morning and the testosterone is soaring too. I had to break up two fights before lunchtime. But then I hear that one of our trickiest trainees has landed himself an apprenticeship and I decide to reward myself with an ice-cold can of Arbor Lager as soon as I get home.

I’m halfway there when I remember.

Bollocks!

I turn the jeep round.

The lift purrs as it takes me up to the penthouse. Will they notice I’m late? There are no excuses for forgetting your own daughter.

As the doors open, a wave of heat hits me: Angelica has closed the bifold doors to keep the pollution out, but it’s turned the penthouse into a greenhouse.

I get this insane urge to call out Hi, honey, I’m home, like in a fifties sitcom, but I stick to ‘Hello?’ I don’t sound like myself. ‘Hello?’ Louder.

Nothing comes back.

I sigh with relief. Has Angelica ‘accidentally’ forgotten I’ve arranged a treat for tonight, and taken Casey out herself? She probably finds it infuriating, even threatening, when I flash the cash. But I’m not trying to take over; I just want to spoil them both, to distract them from the stress and worry they’re facing at the hospital every day.

Still, if they’re not here right now I’ll be able to relax, pour myself a cold beer, sit on the terrace, breathe in the non-existent city smog.

Except the door to Casey’s room is opening and she’s bursting out – is she going to hug me? Every muscle in my body clenches and she skips right past.