I had nothing to say to that. It was weird, my mental state. Stress, maybe. Loss could also do odd things, I remembered that from my father dying. You’d see the person in a crowd, even start to call their name, before your brain caught up and reminded you it couldn’t be them. But since I couldn’t tell the doctor the truth, could they really help? ‘What can they do for me? You can’t take medication if you’re pregnant, I’m sure.’

He kept driving. ‘Nowadays it’s safe to take some of them.’ I found myself wondering – how did he know this? Had he been researching psychosis? Was that what was wrong with me?

I didn’t feel I was losing my mind. But I wondered how it would sound if I said it all out loud to a professional, and I felt a flicker of alarm.

It was unreal when it happened, the pregnancy. Nick and I had been trying for so long, noting every moment of heartburn or bloating and each twinge in my side. Even when the blood came on my thighs I’d convince myself it was a false period. Hope lets you see what you want. Hope blinds you. Then, when I met you, I realised I didn’t want it after all, and I started fudging the dates to Nick – I made sure to only do the OPK tests when he was out, and I fed my ovulation apps with false data, skewing the fertile window. It was dangerous, sleeping with someone else and pretending you wanted a baby with your husband. I couldn’t even say it wasn’t the right time. We’d got the country cottage, I’d given up work. It was the right time and way past it.

One day, a month or two after we met, I decided to take a pregnancy test to quell my strange doubts, the odd cramp and feeling of constant hunger, the morning I looked at milk and wanted to retch, the chafe of swollen breasts against my bra. It couldn’t be. I didn’t get pregnant. Other women did, within a month or two of trying. I’d been trying for three years. Except trying wasn’t the word any more. Enduring might be close, passive and miserable.