‘I’ve lost my baby,’ she said.

‘I thought it might have been that,’ Ida said.

It broke the seal, and the tears began.

‘The tea’ll help,’ said Ida. ‘Well, nothing will help. Not now. And not for a good few months, my duck, I’m going to be honest with you. But take a sip of tea. The heat and the sugar will just bring you back to yourself again.’

The woman nodded.

‘How long?’ Ida asked.

‘Eight weeks,’ said the woman. ‘I only found out a month ago.’

‘Was it a planned one?’

‘No. God no. I thought I’d managed to avoi— Well. I’m not exactly in the first flush of youth, am I.’

‘Mm. “Youth” is a relative thing,’ said Ida. The woman almost smiled.

‘Is it your first?’

The woman nodded, then remembered something, shook her head.

‘I’m bleeding. I’ve been bleeding for a while. That’s how I found out. They did tests – but they thought it was holding steady. The numbers were going up, but they’ve dropped now. Too much. They’ve dropped too much.’

‘And they’re telling you – what? Just to wait it out?’

‘Just to let this thing carry on dying. I’m just to go about my day, and it will keep dying, and eventually the numbers will tell me that it’s properly dead. I might need antibiotics, to f—. To fight it. Make my body flush it out. Like an infection. I didn’t even know if I wanted it. I was thinking about getting rid of it. And then I was thinking, if it could push its way through my old ovaries and a condom, it must have some force behind it, you know, like maybe it was meant to be. But no. But no. Little – fucking – quitter, eh? Scuse my language.’

Ida waved a hand to brush away the word, brought it down on the table to rest near the woman’s wrist.

‘My last one was at forty-six. I thought it was the change. A nasty little postscript on the end of twenty years.’

‘Your last one?’

‘There were five.’ The woman gulped air. ‘I’m telling you this because in the next few months you’re going to realize that nobody will talk about it with you. At all. It happens to so many women and they all keep it to themselves, buttoned all the way up. Oh, I don’t know why. Maybe we just don’t want to bother people with it. Because it’s about blood, death and, you know, our parts, and nobody wants to think about those. It’s not nice for people. Anyway, you’re going to find the silence around it very hard, my duck. Very hard indeed. At least this way you’re prepared for it.’

‘I can’t imagine coping with five. I can’t imagine coping with this one.’