‘But the next morning, Naomi hadn’t changed her mind. The nurse said that she was keeping her. And that was that. She was keeping our baby. I fainted, right there in the hospital entrance. When I came to, I was looking up at all these pale faces. They were staring down at me as if I were some sort of experiment.’

‘Couldn’t you have fought it? If Dominic was genetically the father?’

‘Our lawyers said we could,’ said Emily. ‘But the law is so hazy. Legally, Naomi was the mother, and that was the end of it. They lived in a lovely house, right up near the moors. Nice enough place, nice enough family. It would have been very hard to show that they weren’t the perfect parents. Brutal, the lawyers warned us. Recent court cases have been more sympathetic to the intended parents, but back then . . . I could have killed Naomi. I hated her, and I’ve never been that person.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Casey.

‘I drove up to near where they lived once,’ said Emily. ‘Parked the car just above their house. You could look down at the house from the road. I could see the washing on the line, and two cars parked in the little driveway. It looked normal. I imagined our child, my child, just learning to walk.’

Casey imagined it. The car parked awkwardly up on the moor. The gorse, and the heather, and the beautiful girl crying over the steering wheel.

‘I went a bit mad,’ said Emily. ‘I saw her everywhere, our baby, the girl she would be. I kept seeing glimpses of her, in every face we saw. By the time the courts started finding in favour of the intended parents, it was too late. She would have been a child, by then. You couldn’t . . . You couldn’t just take her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Casey said again.

‘I thought about it though, you know. A baby, somewhere. Anywhere. Just grabbing, and running. I can see how people get to that point. How women end up . . . But then I imagine another woman glancing up, one morning. To that empty pram in the front garden. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t . . .’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know. Everyone is terribly sorry.’

In the park, all around them, women pushed prams, wiped noses, lost tempers. Everyday, every day.

Emily turned towards Casey, meeting her eyes. ‘So you see why I can’t give up this child. Not again. I can’t bear it. When Dr Greystone suggested this, it seemed like a miracle. Thousands of people have gone to places like India and Thailand and Nepal. And they don’t ask all these questions, so for all they know, anything could be happening there. We thought we would help people. I was promised that the women volunteered, that they wanted to do it. I had no idea . . .’

I, not we.

Casey was silent.