They’d laughed at her at school. With her purple hair that had gone wrong – patches of bright purple between patches of brown, and a ruddy tint to her scalp, her hairline. They’d laughed when she told them what her mother believed, and her teacher had given her a detention and she’d known, even though she was too embarrassed to explain, she’d known that one day she would find a way to fight for natural birth. Because Eva felt, in that moment, that she had to protect something that was being lost. That was how it started – a feeling. The logic, the implications for fertility, the long-term effects, even the care homes, those arguments came later. At the beginning, she just wanted to protect.

She looked at Holly. Was it old age that made people so convinced the opinions they held were right? Was it the repetition of telling yourself what you believed, year after year, that brought conviction? When you think about something, it creates a pattern in your brain. When you rethink it, the pattern gets stronger; hazy memories start to feel like recent experiences. Opinions can start to seem like fact.

‘There is too much you don’t know,’ she said to Holly. ‘The technology arrived before society was ready for it. All the ways it can be misused—’

‘No, the technology changed the society. Without it, society would never have been ready for change.’

‘But things were changing.’

‘Too slowly.’

‘Slowly is the best way.’

Holly shook her head. ‘People were in pain,’ she said. ‘Don’t you realise how many people were in pain?’

‘It’s dangerous, what you’ve done. You and Freida. And FullLife.’

‘We’re not going to win with philosophy,’ her mum had said. She was pacing the length of the room, bay windows to back doors, her socked feet stamping on the wooden floor creating a rhythmic thud thud thud in time with her words. We’re not going to win with philosophy. She turned and looked at Eva, held her arms out. ‘We’re going to win with science,’ she said. ‘They’ve moved too fast, I know it – something is going to go wrong. I dreamed about it last night.’

Eva smiled – obviously her mum didn’t really dream up the direction of their group, her mum was brilliant. Her mum knew more than anyone about FullLife. And she was right. Arguments didn’t help, debating didn’t help. They needed facts. They needed to find where FullLife had cut corners, faked research, skipped the required number of trials. Made promises they couldn’t keep. Together they had searched, for years, for that something. Then her mum had fallen ill. Piotr had appeared. She had fallen in love. Her baby had died. The answer had arrived too late for them to find it together.