And today’s the day. First-morning urine.

She checks her phone, but there’s nothing from Joe. He must have gone to breakfast earlier than usual. It is strange for him – he’s the night owl, she the lark. But in some ways she isn’t surprised. It is not possible, Lydia learns over and over again, for an in-law to be truly knitted into the fabric of the Plant family. They shoot the breeze together, share bottles of wine, but she isn’t quite invited into the true intimacy: the sun-lounger confiding sessions she sometimes overhears between Frannie and Cathy. The spontaneous trips into Verona she’s implicitly not invited to. The late-night swims.

Anyway. Lydia is now tasked with the juxtaposition of taking a pregnancy test and looking after a toddler. She sets Paul on the floor in the bedroom and unwraps the packet, scrutinizing the plastic stick.

Each test is £15.99, and Lydia’s bought hundreds of them. Like, actual hundreds. Picked up casually, these days, with milk and bread. She tries not to visit the same checkout twice, in case she gets put on some sort of watch list.

The sky outside the window is lavender-coloured. Lydia stares at it as she wees on the stick, listening out for Paul.

‘Paul?’ Lydia had exclaimed when she had received the text from Joe on the labour ward. ‘Come visit! Now!’ he added.

Joe’s verve, his vigour. That’s what Lydia remembers thinking that night as she drove to the hospital. The world was out there for them, if they wanted it, and Joe was the one who could help her get it, even if the world on that day was just a hospital Costa, cuddles with a baby and an evening car ride. It all added up. She didn’t even mind that he’d insisted on living near his sisters. Didn’t mind that no private occasion, involving only Lydia and Joe, not even wedding anniversaries, were off-limits. That was family, Lydia figured.

So first-morning urine, then. Eighteen periods since they started trying. Nothing. Not even a weak positive, even once. No chemical pregnancy. No period a day late. Nothing. It’s almost laughable.

But today. Day twenty-four. She stands up, flushes the toilet, leaves the stick on the windowsill and picks up Paul.

This would complete it. It would. She sends out a bargain to the universe. ‘I know,’ she says, ‘that I have had so much good lately. So much sun. But haven’t I sacrificed?’ Not a single drop of wine has crossed her lips in a week and a half. She’s been meticulous with the sun-cream. No fish. Going way beyond the NHS’s advice. Because, you know. Why not?

Lydia does know – she really does – that she shouldn’t look at the test early. She knows too that, if there is a God, he won’t be interested in bargaining with her about how much Italian wine she’s turned down, citing tiredness, faked hangovers and antibiotics. Everybody probably thinks she’s already pregnant, but the truth is that she’s lost her mind.