Sod it. She will just look. The time is almost up. She jiggles her leg nervously.

Seriously, where is Joe? She opens the door to the bathroom. Paul reaches for the handle – he loves door handles. Anything he can pull. He also loves to remove the entire contents of a drawer and put it back again.

Lydia brought six pregnancy tests with her to Italy. This is the sort of thing she means: there is no situation that, in two weeks, would warrant six pregnancy tests, but here she is. The stick is on the windowsill, three distended globules of urine next to it, shining in the morning sun. She holds Paul against her hip and creeps towards the test, still bargaining, then peers at it.

Not pregnant.

The words are an offence to Lydia, who has tried so hard, who has been so patient, so stoic, even able to laugh at how insane it’s driven her. But these words. They are as traumatic as HR have requested a meeting and Your hospital test results are back.

Her period is due tomorrow. It’ll be right on time.

Joe isn’t at breakfast. It’s after eight. Lydia has texted him twice, called three times, texted Frannie, eventually too, though she felt like a pain. God, Frannie is such a flake: the texts are undelivered. One tick on WhatsApp.

She stands in line for breakfast, thinking. She’s trying to pretend to Paul, who has his small, warm hand in hers, that she’s not worried, but she is. She worries about Joe all the time. She knows that she can never detach his volatile core from all of the things she loves about him – his dedication to work, his loyalty to her – but, nevertheless, she wishes she could. If he is home late – or not at all, in this case – her first thought is that he is fighting. Joe has kicked lamp-posts in her presence, punched Italian men in bars, shouted at bouncers in clubs, told parking attendants to piss off. And he regrets it. He always regrets it. That’s the weirdest thing. The stupidest thing.

The Plants own their villa, and they go to this nearby villa with a restaurant that serves a cooked breakfast some mornings. They have an unofficial agreement to meet here, around now, but last night Frannie said she would come to Lydia’s at seven to collect Paul. But she didn’t.

Lydia sighs, standing there in the hot, coffee-scented, sunlit room. The entire holiday had been leading up to this day, the day she found out she was pregnant. She knows it’s absurd to have believed that eighteen months of failure wouldn’t become nineteen, that she’d be able to cancel their referral to the fertility clinic. But she thought it might. Just maybe. Didn’t everybody say to go on holiday? To relax? And Lydia has relaxed with intent.

For once, she hasn’t minded the Plants’ inside jokes, their private language, the natural order of Frannie’s banter, Joe’s protectiveness, Cathy’s seriousness. Lydia has relaxed as though she’s been prescribed it. Three hours on a sun-lounger, twice a day. One book read. One swim. Ten hours’ sleep.