The pain didn’t go away. It became more intense and my energy drained away with a horrible flow of blood and some sort of mucus that caught me by surprise and stained my clothes, exhausted itself and me and then returned after a few days and brought with it a putrid smell that frightened me more than the pain ever had. I felt as if my insides were rotting.

I dragged myself to the doctor and the whole process was set in motion.

‘Please don’t tell Mother.’

Doctor was sitting at his desk reading the notes from the specialist.

‘My dear Clara, I will have to tell your mother that you’re going into hospital. I will have to tell her that you are having a hysterectomy. What I don’t have to tell your mother is that you have been infected by sleeping with a man suffering from gonorrhoea, and that you stupidly neglected to see a doctor until it was too late to save your womb. That information is no one’s business but your own.’

‘You do like calling a spade a spade.’

‘A spade is a spade, you silly woman. Does he know?’

‘Who?’

‘This man. This father of your infection.’

‘No.’

He folded up the papers in front of him and then unfolded them. He smoothed them out and then began to fold them again. ‘You should tell him,’ he said at last.

‘No. I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t, Doctor. Please don’t bully me.’

He sighed. ‘Don’t be melodramatic, Clara. He’s probably busy infecting other women.’

‘Probably,’ I said. ‘That’s pretty likely.’

I thought of poor old anagram.

Not for long.

She had her three lovely little girls, I thought. She was one of the lucky ones.

He was talking. He was saying something like, ‘You know what this means, don’t you, Clara? It will take you a long time to come to terms with the implications of this operation, but the world won’t come to an end’ – all that sort of stuff, and all the time he was speaking he folded and unfolded the papers in front of him. My papers.

I was crying.

Again, again. More tears.

I never knew it was possible to manufacture so many tears, nor so much of that bloody gluk that was seeping out of me as I cried. He came round to me and stood beside me, not touching me, just standing there quite still. I could hear his quiet breathing. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it out in front of me. I took it and mopped at my face.

‘Please don’t tell Mother.’