This was some hours later. They were lying side by side on her bed staring at the ceiling. The jagged peaks of her hysteria had dulled and faded. Outside the window the day had darkened, evening drawing in.

‘You told her?’ Corinne asked.

‘She guessed.’

‘Was she shocked?’

‘Shocked. Angry. And disappointed.’ She sighed and ran her hand absently over her belly. The hunger that had seized her earlier in the day had left, and now she just felt hollow and empty. She thought of the lonely occupant of the dark cavern of her womb.

‘She’ll want me to get rid of it, I just know it. I probably should too.’

‘And your father? Will she tell him?’

Eva frowned, her hand resting heavily on her tummy.

‘I don’t know.’

Her mother still hadn’t returned from the hospital. She’d heard her father on the phone a while ago, his voice still grave with shock.

‘Do you think he told Becca?’ Eva asked now.

‘Maybe.’

‘He must have. How else would she have found out?’

Then she remembered the day he’d picked her up in UCD, how upset he’d been over that text. She had almost forgotten about the anonymous sender, the photograph taken outside Melissa’s house.

‘You didn’t tell Beth, did you? About me and Ross. About the baby. Did you?’

‘Of course not. I promised I would not.’

Eva glanced across at Corinne, saw the seriousness on her face. She was lying so still, the two of them wrapped in a companionable hush. There was something soothing about Corinne’s presence, so different to the jumpy animation of before that Eva had disliked about her. It made Eva wonder if the quirkiness and clownish act had been just that – an act. And Eva felt bad then, because the whole time she’d just been talking about herself. She hadn’t once spoken to Corinne about how she was being shunted back home, her stay with them abruptly cut short.

‘How do you feel about going home?’

Corinne bit her lip but didn’t answer, and Eva believed she saw a trace of agitated fear cross her face.

‘Beth will really miss you,’ she offered, and Corinne made a small sound of derision.

‘Don’t tell her I said this, but I am a little glad to be leaving her. She is very … I don’t know the word—’

‘Clingy?’

‘Yes. She wants more from me than I can give her. Sometimes I catch her staring at me so hard, it scares me a little. It’s like she’s not really a full person, you know. Like there is something missing that she wants me to fill. It is too much. When I’m with her, I feel she wants even the air I breathe.’

‘You feel suffocated?’

‘Yes. But I don’t feel that with you,’ Corinne said, softening.