‘I’ve got a new commission that I’m drawing preliminary sketches for, and I can’t focus when it’s this hot, so I work at night.’

Before she can ask any follow-ups, I try the quiche. The eggs are soft and the Brie melts in the mouth. She clearly doesn’t suspect I’m trying embryo transfer again or she’d never risk serving me a listeria time bomb.

‘You don’t need to be working all hours, Gemma. Creatives are surely allowed to miss deadlines, be a little flaky?’

Flaky. She has no idea how bad things got. Only Bear knows how lost I’ve been, and I worry it’s traumatized him for life. I peer through the doors: he doesn’t appear too traumatized now as he whizzes around the garden, barking at the goldfinches pecking at Isabel’s stained-glass feeder.

‘Well, I need all the work I can get right now, especially as I can’t be sure what the situation will be—’

So much for waiting till after lunch.

Her left eyebrow rises. ‘What situation?’

I exhale. Let’s get this over with. ‘I’m . . . giving it another go. The frozen embryo transfer.’

Her body straightens up. ‘Right now?’

We both glance down at my plate and I brace myself to have the remains of the killer quiche snatched away. Instead she smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She felt my two failures almost as keenly as I did.

‘Yeah. Summer seemed as good a time as any . . .’

Isabel lets her gaze fall onto my tummy, before checking herself. ‘How far into the cycle are you?’

Previously I’ve given her exact dates and she tracked my progress as precisely as I imagine she used to track cattle being inseminated on the farm. ‘It’s very early on, and I’m superstitious. I am trying not to raise anyone’s hopes.’

‘But you haven’t had the transfer yet?’

‘No.’

Isabel puts down her fork. ‘The thing is, Gemma, I was starting to hope that you’d decided to let it go.’

I gawp at her. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘You don’t think I should use the last two embryos?’

She stands up, walks towards the window. Anything but tell me to my face that she’s betraying me.

‘You know, when I lost my husband, the only reason I kept going was for Andrew. If it hadn’t been for him, I think I’d have gone to bed and never got up again. The loss was so physical. As though when the stroke took him, it took away this vast chunk of me, too. My instinct for survival. My history. My future.’

She’s lost in the memory and I should empathize, but all I’m thinking is: This isn’t about you.

‘But of course I did have Andrew – not to mention the farm – so fading away wasn’t a possibility. When Andrew left for college five years later, and I sold up to move here, it came back. That pointlessness . . .’ She turns back towards me and takes an inelegant gulp of wine.