He remains silent, a deep sense of worry building at the pit of his stomach. He can still feel the horrible distress he’d experienced two years earlier, on the night Achilles was born, when he thought that he might lose her.

‘No,’ he says.

She nods and the tears fall even more. Both of them know what this might mean. The consequences. The decisions that will have to be made. He wraps his arms around her.

‘I can’t …’ she begins, the words growing muffled as she buries her face in his chest.

‘I know,’ he says, feeling his own eyes begin to grow damp. ‘But if you are, then you are. And we will deal with it.’ He hesitates. He knows what he wants to say, what he needs to say, but isn’t sure whether it’s too soon to express such an idea. ‘I can’t lose you, Beverley. I won’t even run the risk.’

She smiles at him, overwhelmed with love. He is such a good husband. Kind and understanding. She places a hand to her stomach, protective and fearful at the same time.

And at that precise moment, in San Francisco, a twenty-nine-year-old man named Jack Dorsey, having finished creating the operating system and website, tweets this:

@jack: “just setting up my twttr”

Tuesday

AIDAN DOESN’T EXIST

George Cleverley had had so many dealings with the firm of Arlo, Quill, Fitzgerald & Connolly over the years that he’d come to loathe the place. Even stepping out of the lift on to the third floor, where his solicitor’s office was located, gave him a nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach, comparable only to the smell of chlorine, which took him back to the humiliating swimming lessons of his childhood.

And then there were all the accoutrements that came with such an expensive firm, each one designed to project the idea that you were relaxing in the lobby of a luxury hotel and not seeking help for a legal problem that was, most likely, going to bring extraordinary levels of stress crashing down upon your head. The sound of pan-pipe music, for example, delivering a bilious version of Abba’s ‘Money, Money, Money’. The ironic eighties sweets gathered in a bowl on the receptionist’s desk. The incongruous framed picture of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway being riddled with gunfire in the closing scenes of Bonnie & Clyde.

He glanced over at the young woman seated behind the reception desk, tapping away at her computer. He hadn’t met her before and was impressed by how she was resisting the urge to ask for a selfie. Office protocol, he expected. Drumming his fingers on the side of his chair, he sighed dramatically and waited for her to initiate a conversation. When she didn’t, he felt that he would pass out with boredom if he didn’t say something, so he cleared his throat as he turned in her direction.