She shook her head violently. ‘Shut up and listen,’ she said. ‘There’s no reason to think that would happen. Next time it will be OK. It has to be.’

‘It will be if we use the pouch.’

He could see she was getting more upset.

‘It’s safer …’ he persisted. ‘I can show you the statistics. Natural birth is unsafe, we can’t make that mistake again. I won’t let it hap—’

He thought for a moment she was going to slap him, but she didn’t.

‘That bird died,’ he said.

The pause was awful. Horrible. He wanted it unsaid. He knew he would want it unsaid even as he said it. He didn’t know why he couldn’t stop himself. But he didn’t say it to be cruel, it was just that false hope seemed such a fake thing right now, such a useless thing. And now he’d started, he had to explain himself.

‘The bird didn’t fly off, during the night. I’m sorry …’ He swallowed, staring at his hands again. Why had eye contact become so hard? ‘When I got up in the morning I found it lying there. It was dead. I picked it up, held it in my palm – I wanted to be sure, you know? I’d hoped it would be OK …’

‘But it was gone,’ she said. ‘It had flown away.’

‘I took it to the back of the garden and buried it. So you wouldn’t have to know … I wanted to protect you.’

‘By lying to me?’

Her voice was still quiet, but there was an edge to it.

‘It wasn’t really a lie. I was—’

‘You were lying!’

He’d wanted to protect her. That was all. He’d thought he was being kind.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ she said, loud and angry now. ‘You’re ridiculous,’ she shouted. ‘And now we have the proof. You can’t protect me, can you.’

She said it coldly – like she intended to hurt him. And he responded in kind.

‘We should have used the pouch,’ he said. ‘A late-stage transfer, at the very least, and everything would have been OK. And we have to use it now. We cannot go through this with another child.’

Her eyes, staring at him, just staring.

‘If you want to try again, we have to use the pouch. That’s that.’

He recognised what it was, her expression, as he stopped talking long enough to notice the sound of his own breath, and hers, held tight into her chest. She was looking at him with disgust. They had fallen apart then, and neither of them had been able to find a way back together.