‘I hope so, one day. I may not like him much right now, but he’s still my father. And I still have good memories from when I was little, before farming ground him down, before I woke up to the path he was sending me on. I suppose it’s like Anna implied: however tough it was for me, at least they were my family, at least there was love, even if my father buried it well.’

As Sylvia raised her glass, a sharp, sudden pain stabbed her in the abdomen, taking her breath away. She dropped the glass on the table, spilling its contents.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, I think so. Just a strange pain for a second.’

Evelyne pushed a paper napkin to her and Sylvia mopped up the lemonade. She could feel the baby move almost constantly now. Just five weeks to go. Almost fully baked. How strange it felt to think back to a year previously, when this was the furthest thing from her mind.

‘How does it feel, to be having a baby?’

‘Bizarre. Surreal. Bloody uncomfortable.’

Evelyne gave a wry smile. ‘Perhaps I’ll change my mind one day, but I just can’t see that I’ll ever have a child. And I know I’ll never get married. It feels like social conditioning, a way for society to cast me in a mould and keep me in check. I want a career that earns me enough money to eat expensive dinners and travel to Paris for the weekend and drink cocktails.’ She laughed. ‘I want to have steamy affairs at music festivals and sleep on the beach in India and drink beer at Oktoberfest. I want to sleep with a man half my age when I’m fifty. I want to be free to do as I please, for as long as I please.’

Sylvia smiled. ‘I wanted all that too,’ she said, before amending her sentence at Evelyne’s raised eyebrows. She twisted her wedding ring around her finger. ‘Okay, I know I’m not as radical as you, but I wanted the career and expensive dinners and the freedom to do as I pleased.’

‘No steamy affairs?’

‘Well…’

Evelyne laughed.

‘Getting pregnant at this age was the last thing I wanted. I feel like I’ve veered off down a path I never intended.’ She and Jim now had a taupe-coloured sofa, a coffee machine and a crib in the spare room. Had she lost her aim in life like a coin down that sofa?

‘Then fight.’ Evelyne grabbed Sylvia’s hand across the table. ‘Fight to make things different. Fight to have a career and be a mother too. If we all fight in our own small way then maybe things will change.’