After they let me out of the hospital – and gave me the bill, of course – I went back to my lighthouse. My Asda man dropped me home with some fresh milk and all those pills the doctors gave me. I managed on my own for a few weeks, though, before I realised I wasn’t managing at all. Couldn’t really walk, you know. Couldn’t get out to the black rocks. Couldn’t lift the kettle. Silly things like that. And he came round, after every shift, wanting to check – he said – just checking in. Sometimes offering me the spare room that they’d made in the garage for Bea’s dad, before he’d passed away. I said no to that, at first, and no, and thank you but no, then one day I said yes. Finally I learned to appreciate the people who were actually there, in my life.

There were flowers in the room when I arrived, you know. Daffodils, just on the cusp of opening.

But there are other reasons why I’m making this recording. There’s some information that I’d like to pass on, should anyone come looking for me. I’ve made a folder, and if I die then Declan will look after it until you arrive. Perhaps this is my last chance to explain.

I was fighting with FullLife because of the risk the pouch poses to women. All women. It’s not really about the technology, or the pouch. It is about society. No one wanted to hear what I had to say before. I can’t blame them – the benefits were so great they seemed to outweigh the risk. But sooner or later, people will want to hear. And maybe, once I’m dead, you’ll be ready to forgive me. So, in the folder I’ve put the details of all the cases I know of. You’ll be familiar with some of them already, I expect. They show the pouch being used by men to control women.

Imagine the kind of people who believe a woman’s only role is to reproduce. What are women worth to them now? Imagine men who used to run businesses, newspapers, even countries unchallenged. Imagine them losing their jobs to women. Their sense of importance. Their version of the world. They have been staying quiet, but they are not gone. FullLife pushed them aside, with influence, with popular opinion, with money, but that was never going to last. We wanted to pretend we’d solved all our problems, but all we did was make them harder to see. There is resentment bubbling. I can feel it. And I still believe now what I believed then: some people should not be allowed to carry a pouch.