Back then they’d used them in schools as well, as props – teenagers given the chance to see what it’s really like, carrying an unborn child. It didn’t put them off, although whether that was really the intention she’d never been sure. These days, celebrities made a show of designer pouches, of being friends with their children as well as parents – holding hands down the street in their matching outfits, courting the paparazzi. The pouch had become trendy, especially among the young – why wait, when you could study part time and still have your career, now parenthood was equal; and it came in such pretty colours. There had been FullLife sponsorship for all baby pouchers at first, to make financially feasible what today was offered as a free-of-charge benefit to every health-care plan. And if you didn’t have a health-care plan, there were always used pouches available. FullLife were very generous with them.

The texture was almost butter-soft, but padded too, and it slipped into place so easily it terrified her. She’d made a mistake with the colour. Tropical-fish yellow was what she actually might have wanted, had she been a different sort of woman who was not horrified by the baby pouch. Instead she should have gone for a deep black-red, like the colour of the inside, to remind herself of what it really was – to make sure she didn’t slip, quietly, into feeling at ease with it. Even though there was no baby inside the trial pouch she was wearing, she knew she could not let herself relax.

But she had persevered. She’d worn the pouch for the full day, felt the weight and warmth of it, the way it moved against her skin. She’d recognised the feeling of selflessness that would come from carrying something precious. As night fell she’d hung it up on the pouch stand, just like they told you to, turned on the incubator and attached the nutrient bag to the feed on the pouch’s surface. It provided more than food to her imaginary baby; it was what the pouch needed to sustain its cells, its entire biological environment. She closed her eyes thinking of every way that it was wrong. But in the morning it was still there, waiting for her. Warm and inviting. Despite everything, she knew the comfort of waking after a peaceful night’s sleep to reach out a hand and stroke.

The couple wanted to leave, she realised, but didn’t want to be impolite, having started the conversation.

‘I should get going,’ she said, and held out her hand.