I was working hard, too. I’d trained in web design and after a few years of working in larger companies, my university friend Annie and I decided to go it alone and we formed a small business together. We hired an office in a Victorian school that was converted into small offices and studios. We could have worked from home, but neither of us was good at solitude and having somewhere to go each day helped keep us motivated.

When I was absorbed in my work, I didn’t think about getting pregnant. I just took the view that if it happened, it would, but then it didn’t and after a while, I forgot all about it. For the last few years I hadn’t thought about contraception. It had been well over ten years since we’d decided to try for a baby and by now I hadn’t thought there was a chance of pregnancy.

So when I slept with Tom, it really hadn’t occurred to me there might be consequences. Not of that kind, anyway. It had literally never crossed my mind, not beforehand or during or afterward. Not one thought.

I don’t know whether it was subliminal or what. Had I had that fling with him knowing I might get pregnant? I was thirty-eight: Was my body thinking I had one last chance? I hated to think I’d do that to any man, to use them to have a baby. I was ashamed I’d done it to another woman. Bad enough to sleep with her husband, but to not protect her—her above everyone—against my getting pregnant? I had never imagined that my overwhelming feeling at finding out I was expecting a baby would be shame.

•   •   •

I found out on a Friday, a month after I’d been to Tom’s house. Those weeks had been strange at home. It was as though the temperature had changed between Harry and me. I couldn’t relax. I kept myself busy at work, arriving early and coming home late. Annie would leave work first and I’d tell her I’d leave soon, but then I’d go to the kitchen and make coffee and hang out there to see who would join me. A lot of the people who worked in our building were young and single; they’d often go out for a drink after working until eight or nine o’clock. I joined a gym, too, and told Harry I wanted to get fit. Like Ruby, I wanted to yell.