When I was a little girl I used to imagine what it would be like when I had children of my own. Losing Mum at the age of ten had made me determined to recreate the magical time we had spent together in those early years. In my imagination, the moment of conception would have been planned for and it would feel momentous and fated. Finding out the news would be a shared experience – the father and I would sit together, excitedly, as we waited for the result to appear. Then we would embrace, perhaps jump up and down with glee, before starting to make plans. Doctor’s appointments would be made, names chosen, nurseries decorated.

This reality bears no resemblance to what I’d imagined. Sitting in a disabled loo, holding a stick and trying to remember the actual act that led to this had not been part of the plan. I feel removed from it all, a ghost floating through a story I have not written.

But I know one thing for certain. I can’t tell Connor. I have to deal with this myself and I know, under the circumstances, that there can be only one outcome.

The appointment was relatively straightforward to make. When you already feel disconnected from yourself, answering a few personal, probing questions to a disembodied voice on the phone doesn’t matter like it would have in the past. A date and time was confirmed, and now I find myself, five days after taking the test, sitting in a clinic, listening to a nurse called Helena describe what will happen to me over the next forty-eight hours.

It all sounds so simple. I will take one tablet – named mifepristone – at the clinic and this will stop the pregnancy by blocking the progesterone hormone. I will then be given the second medicine – misoprostol – which I will take twenty-four hours later at home and that will make my womb contract and expel the baby.

Moments ago I had lain on the examining table while Helena rubbed a clear jelly-like substance on my tummy then rubbed over it with a probe. It was a moment I had imagined for years. The moment I finally saw my baby. Never in a million years had I thought it would be like this.

‘Do you want to see the screen?’ Helena had asked. ‘It’s okay not to. Most women don’t.’

I had shaken my head and Helena had turned the screen away from me. Whatever was on it, whatever existed in my womb at that point, had no right to be there.