My hand is held out. I see it there. I feel it aching in the cold, but it lingers, neither reaching nor falling. I do not care that splashes of icy water are numbing my knuckles, or that the longer I hesitate the ruder I might appear. Because my hesitation is more important than my joints or my reputation. My hesitation is everything.

I still don’t know if I did the right thing.

A different kind of life could have been equally worthwhile, I believe. And equally compromised.

But I want you to know that is where I’ll be – that is where my mind will be – on the day that I die. I will be standing on the fractured black rocks beside the crashing waves of the Tarbat Ness Peninsula, and at the same time I will be standing in that office among the deep wooden shelves facing my undetermined future. My hand will be held out in front of me and I will still be standing there, with my indecision.

Chapter 18

HOLLY STARED AT the screen long after Freida had stopped talking. Stopped telling them about her doubts, about her uncertainty. Her concerns, which were justified. Her compassion, which was just barely implied.

And not about her pride, she didn’t mention that – though Holly could hear it between the lines – how it can change you, to feel like you’re not needed any more. How impossible Freida found it to admit her own mistakes. But she was also saying the risk was not about infertility, it was not something being inherited. Was that right? She seemed to be saying it was arbitrary, it was …

Had she got that right?

‘Play it again,’ Holly said, trying and failing to keep her voice calm. ‘Can we play it over again?’

And yes, Freida was saying that there might be a risk, but it was not a genetic inability to have children. They’d been jumping to the wrong conclusion, they must have been. There was a better explanation. The answer was there, in her research on mice, and in that folder she was holding – the mice weren’t becoming unable to reproduce, they could still have perfectly healthy offspring. And Freida said the same could apply to people. Her research from over fifty years ago explained what they’d been seeing, and explained it better than any of their fears had. There was no reason to think there was anything biologically the matter with Rosie, with Kaz … The pouch hadn’t done any permanent damage. It wasn’t a perfect technology that had harmed humanity. It was an imperfect technology that carried a natural risk.

‘Oh, thank God,’ she said, her hand flying to her mouth as Eva gently touched her shoulder.

‘Has, erm …’ Declan spoke quietly. ‘Has something happened? To bring you here, I mean.’

Holly nodded.

‘To do with pouch abuse?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, not that.’