‘Where?’ she said, looking around, hoping to spot a secret door.

The woman coughed and waved her arm vaguely.

There was a table pushed against one wall and above it a cupboard. The door had been left half open and Connie could see that it was stacked with a jumble of misshapen bottles, all filled with a murky liquid. She spotted a red contraption made of rubber – a syringe with a bulb in the centre of the hose – and, beside that, a basket of sharp metal objects. Noticing, the woman discreetly pushed the door closed.

A child’s trike stood in the corner, wheels muddied from recent play. There were remnants of a meal left on the side too, dirty crockery, pots and pans.

Stepping away awkwardly, Connie collided with the edge of the table.

‘It’s all right,’ said the woman. ‘Everyone reacts like this at first, but the alternative is far worse.’

She told the story of a girl as young as Connie, who’d been refused the procedure by doctors, but hadn’t been lucky enough to find someone like herself. ‘You can imagine what happened next,’ she said. Her voice was soothing, as if she was telling a bedtime story – a fable with a message to be learned.

Connie put her hand to her mouth. She didn’t want to imagine what had happened to the girl. It was all she could do to envisage swallowing that medication. She saw herself lying on the table while the woman inserted one of the sharp metal objects inside her or squirted a strange liquid from the pump.

From somewhere in the house, a baby cried. The woman glanced at the ceiling. Connie looked up too, feeling the irony, wondering about the woman’s motivation. Was it to help young women or was it simply for the money? Somehow, she didn’t seem the type to care about a girl’s plight. And what about Dorothy? Whose interests did she have at heart – Connie’s or her own? All those photos of Johnny on her walls, yet none of his art. Maybe Dorothy didn’t want anything – or anyone – to come between herself and her son. His obsession with art, his baby inside Connie.

‘No,’ she said with sudden clarity. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

She turned, pushed past Dorothy and ran.

12

Marina

January 1992

Marina sails about London as if she is mapping it out. She takes long bus rides with no sense of her destination, getting off at the city’s edges and returning the way she has come.