It was an odd thing to do, given that he had his keys in his pocket, but he already felt unwelcome. This was no longer his home. He didn’t deserve it.

Julianne answered the door.

She was wearing smart black trousers and a navy shirt with red birds on – in the shape of swallows, he thought, but red. Red swallows, flying. And a red silk scarf tied loosely around her neck. He looked up at her face.

‘Did you forget your keys?’ she said.

He shook his head, and followed her indoors.

They sat side by side on the pale green sofa, facing the bay window. The light was lower now – it made the tracks on the windows glitter like snail’s trails. Sometimes he wished that the sun would just go away. It felt like every corner of London had the power to blind. He remembered history lessons about the smog, the yellow-grey cloud of pollution that had once darkened the streets. Hard to imagine.

He took Julianne’s hand in his, and she let him, though he felt her resistance. Perhaps it was obvious what was coming. Or obvious that something was coming.

‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.

She pulled her hand back, and waited.

‘There are two things, actually.’

He wanted to do this logically. To explain. He might not get another chance.

‘There’s been something happening at work,’ he said.

She frowned, but didn’t interrupt. Had he wanted her to interrupt?

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. But there’s a problem with the pouches. A baby has … actually, over the past three years five babies have died during their birth. We don’t know why. I think the numbers will increase. And now I’ve been fired.’

‘You’ve been fired?’

‘No, that was another lie. I don’t know why I said that. I resigned.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I couldn’t do an autopsy on a newborn baby.’

‘Oh, James …’ She reached forward to take his hand now. ‘Of course you couldn’t, that sounds—’

‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s been happening for years. I’ve been lying about my job for years.’

‘Are you sure?’

He stared at her.

‘I mean, we’d have heard about it, surely?’

And so he sat back and started at the beginning, told her everything about his job, from the first time a birth had gone wrong, the way the pouch was delivered to him, the way he accepted it and didn’t tell her when he got home, and the way he’d told no one and had kept on doing his research, studying the faulty pouches, ever since.

‘That’s awful,’ she said. ‘Those poor parents. No wonder they don’t want to talk about it.’