Francesco looked like he might cry. ‘Urgh!’ he said. ‘You drive me crazy! I have been so, so mad at you!’

‘I didn’t know how to fix it. I felt like I deserved being ignored, because that’s exactly what I’d done to you.’

‘So what do you suggest now?’ He was sort of laughing and crying, and Penny wanted to get up and kiss him. Instead she reached out across the table.

‘I want to commit to you,’ Penny said. ‘This is messy and weird and god, we’ve already started the IVF, so that’s a whole other thing to discuss. But I want you. I do. And I promise I will show up to that commitment every single day. I won’t run away, or try to hide, or push you away. I promise to let you see me, even when it hurts to be seen. I will be your partner, and eat whatever you make, and I will continue to fall in friendship with you, whilst also being madly, and truly, head-over-heels in love.’

Francesco stood and came to her side of the table, slipping onto the bench beside her.

‘I promise all of that too,’ he said, leaning in for a kiss. ‘Penny, I love you.’

Penny pulled away and put a finger to his lips. ‘Just, one teeny tiny thing,’ she said.

Francesco sighed playfully. ‘Are you joking?’ he laughed.

‘The IVF.’

‘I think it’s great,’ he said. ‘We can totally figure that out.’ He leaned his forehead against Penny’s.

‘I’m not asking you to be a father,’ Penny said, softly. ‘That would be … weird.’

‘It would,’ Francesco said. ‘But I can commit to you as a mother. It’s unconventional, but so is everything about you …’

‘This is the first thing I have done for myself – properly for me, knowing in my gut that it is right – and so, you know. Potentially – hopefully! – it won’t just be me soon …’

‘I get it,’ said Francesco. ‘I understand. I know what I’m letting myself in for.’

‘It’s not a deal-breaker?’

He looked up to the sky, frustrated that he hadn’t snogged her face off yet and said, ‘No. I know you’ve wanted motherhood for a very long time, and it was basically the plan right before you met me, and then this whole past year took you so off-course, and I disappeared … The last thing I want to do is to pull you off course again. I won’t. If it’s you and a baby then it’s you and a baby. I can be Uncle Francesco.’

Penny laughed. ‘Maybe not uncle.’

Francesco brushed her hair from her face and behind her ear and lowered his voice to say, ‘Penelope Hermione Bridge, you are the least traditional woman I have ever met and we can make up our own rules. Together. Okay? We can defy convention together.’

‘I love you,’ Penny said.