‘I just think people should know the truth, that’s all,’ she said, looking into his eyes without turning away for the first time that evening. He looked back. For a moment, they allowed themselves to hold each other’s gaze. ‘There are risks,’ she said. ‘I want people to know that, either way, there are risks. There is no easy choice. There never was.’

By the time James arrived home, he felt like there was something inevitable in the way his life was about to fall apart. It didn’t feel like his choice, although he knew he would be the one saying things, and doing things, that would cause the destruction.

But he loved his wife. He kept telling himself that he loved his wife. They had shared … well, not dreams. They had shared a home. They had built a home together. They’d raised their children together, shared the joy and the sleeplessness, the birthdays, the chickenpox. She had helped him wash when he broke his shoulder, and she’d done so without ever making him feel like he needed help at all. And when her mum died, he’d been able to sit beside her and ask: how can I help? And she had replied that he couldn’t, not really, but at the same time that he had helped already.

They had never even asked him to lie.

For years, he had been lying to his wife about the work he was doing, hiding his fears from her, his suspicions – telling no one what was really going on. He had decided to keep the way he spent the majority of his time, the questions he thought about every day of his life, a secret. Why?

He’d thought it was because FullLife were making him lie. But they weren’t.

Yes, everyone knew it would be frowned upon to talk to a journalist about company policy. Everyone knew that their research was confidential – they’d all signed the forms when they took their first job there. That would have been the same in any research post. Even at a university your research belonged to the university, not to you – you were not free to give it to anyone you chose. But it had been him, James Quentin, who he’d always thought was a decent kind of man, who had decided to lie to his wife. To pretend he was still working on audio and visual connections to enhance brain development, when for three years the only research he had done into brain development was to ask if the lack of it had caused a stillbirth.

Perhaps it was the reality of letting everyone down that he couldn’t stand. All those people who loved the pouch, who trusted it so completely – himself included, Julianne, his children … He had let everyone down.

He rang the doorbell.