‘Okay,’ he says easily, in that way he always does, with her.

‘Where am I in all this?’ she says plainly.

‘What do you mean?’ he says, predictably. Lydia lights a second cigarette and sighs. Do men ever get it on the first go?

‘I mean – when you answered Frannie’s call – did you think of me?’

‘Of course I did,’ he says, Lydia thinks honestly, ‘I only thought of you. Waking up alone, with Paul –’

‘But you went anyway,’ she says. ‘To rescue Frannie.’ She throws the stub of the first cigarette on to the ground. ‘That’s the thing,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I would have done that.’

Joe is immediately defensive. Big shoulders up. Fingers drumming on the wood of the table. He goes to speak, then hesitates.

‘You didn’t think of the implications of it – for us,’ she says.

‘What are they?’ he says, his expression wounded, like a small child’s. Joe the rescuer. Lydia, for the first time in her life, wishes she could erase that quality of his, that she could focus him away from helping others and on to himself, on to her.

‘If you get found out – what happens?’ she says. She spreads her arms wide, the cool summer air moving across her flesh. ‘I lose you. If I get pregnant soon – then what? You’d be lost to both of us.’

‘I’m doing everything I can to stop that happening,’ Joe says, lurching suddenly across the table towards her, his eyes imploring. ‘Literally everything.’

Something about his urgency frightens her. ‘Don’t be like that.’

‘Like what?’ he says, hurt. ‘I’m just trying to get you to see –’

‘But if you hadn’t picked up the call, we wouldn’t be in this position,’ Lydia says, but he’s wearing her down with his desperate expression.

‘How could I not pick up that call?’ he shouts. His voice is hoarse with it. ‘Fucking hell, Lyds.’ He bangs his fist on the table, which rattles.

‘Don’t shout at me,’ she says in a low voice, a warning tone. ‘Don’t do that.’

‘What am I supposed to do, then?’ he says. He stands and turns around, his hands on his head, a man who doesn’t know what to do. He kicks the leg of the table, which makes her jump.

‘Joe.’

‘I’m sorry – I’m sorry.’

‘If you do that again, I leave.’

‘I’m sorry …’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘How can I … what can I do?’ he says. It sounds rhetorical, but it isn’t. ‘You think I shouldn’t care about my sister?’

‘Put. Me. First,’ she says. Her hand moves almost unconsciously to her stomach. She isn’t pregnant, but she is already a mother. She knows it. The eggs are in there, waiting for their moment. Her children are out there, waiting to meet her. She puts them first already.

‘What do you mean?’ Joe says. But Lydia can tell he already knows. Those intelligent brown eyes are on hers, asking her not to ask him.