As he thought about that, sitting on the Tube somewhere between Temple and Blackfriars, he was amazed at how he had been able to walk with such purpose. How he’d been able to convince himself so quickly that keeping going was the answer. It helped having something he believed in. He’d lost that, now. He didn’t even have the energy to stand up.

He had wanted to explain things – to explain himself, properly – to Julianne. But he had failed. She didn’t understand. Not about Avigail, and not about the pouch. She thought they were going to fix it. That it was something they could fix. But he knew better than that. In a way, he was glad he wouldn’t be around to see the look on their faces when they finally understood. His family. He wouldn’t have to see the blame in his children’s eyes when they realised what all this meant. That was it, he knew now, that was the reason he’d been lying to everyone. He couldn’t stand the blame.

Even yesterday morning he’d still thought there was an answer to find, a problem to fix. He’d believed – or, at least, had been able to convince himself enough to keep going – that he could find a solution. But he saw it clearly now; what they had been witnessing for the past few years was just the beginning. More babies were going to die. Of course they were. It would start in a few isolated cases in the third generation but soon enough the numbers would grow. Exponentially, he predicted. And what was the cause? He didn’t know. But it was genetic. It had to be. The genetic material so carefully incubated in the pouches was becoming corrupt. Small unnoticeable problems were being passed down, and amplified with each subsequent generation of pouch use. Were the chromosomes developing incorrectly in the foetus? Something like Down’s, but a different aberration, one that had never been seen before. Perhaps it was good that the babies died, he thought, then realised that he sickened himself.