He closed his eyes, as he had done once before, on a street in London, in the snow, scrunched them tight and tried to transport himself back through time. He could feel it rewinding around him. He was a young man again, with an idea to design a new audio system that would let people play music to their babies in the pouch. He was presenting to the board, sweating with nerves, stammering his way through until he got to the videos, when he was able to step back and see the smiles as they turned to applause. He credited Julianne at the end. With a modest smile of his own, a nervous laugh. It was all my wife’s idea, he said. She wanted to play the twins some salsa. And of course a photo of her, with the pouch. The twins, everyone knew, were a sign they had used IVF from the start. The photo was a nice touch of intimacy.

And there had been a wonderful closeness, while they were pregnant with the twins. So different from anything he had felt with Avigail. A sense of combined purpose, knowing that they were both together on this – that they were partners. That was the most contentment he’d felt in his life.

The most desire though, that was before he was married. That was sitting in Avigail’s back garden, not far out of London but at the same time far beyond everything else, on a September evening that was warmed with soft light and skies of a deeper blue than he could remember seeing since. He’d taken her several research reports about the pouch, the monitoring of different nutrient mixes that would be put on the market – actually he’d cleared it with his supervisor before leaving, but he didn’t tell Avigail that. She’d smiled when he handed them over, left them sitting on the kitchen table and led him outdoors. He started to speak but she put her finger to her lips.

‘Eva’s sleeping upstairs,’ she whispered, and gestured to the outdoor chairs clustered around two low tables near the cherry tree, each with unlit candles on. ‘We won’t wake her, if we talk here,’ she said. Although whatever words he’d been about to speak, he had forgotten the second he felt her whispered breath on his ear. She reached forward with some matches. She was in an unusual mood. Avigail was rarely this subdued – she liked to argue, to question him. She didn’t usually want to sit outside watching the flickering light of candles.

‘My daughter was adopted,’ she said. ‘Have I told you that before?’

‘No,’ he said, surprised. She’d rarely told him anything personal, and something like that you would remember.

‘It’s not a secret,’ she said. ‘Eva knows, and that’s all that matters really.’