I had no idea you could get so ill just from that, from expecting a baby. It was like every part of Kathryn’s body was against the idea. Bits of her that I thought might have just yielded to the situation swelled up, bruised, bled and even split. Every month her body seemed to resist that little bit more. And all the while, he was in there, growing stronger and stronger.

By the seventh month, her legs were like thick branches. Her curves were swelling, bending the wrong way.

One morning I kissed her in the kitchen and left for work as usual. But when I stepped outside it was colder than I’d thought, so I popped back upstairs for my jumper, and there she was, naked, standing in front of the mirror, a hand on her belly, looking herself up and down. She’d slipped off her dressing gown, and it lay in a red Kathryn-shape on the bed behind her. It was as though she was standing in front of one of those distorting mirrors you get at the fair; she was a strange reversal of her usual shape, her flesh now solidly filling the spaces where her curves had once dipped in and out.

She turned and saw me standing in the doorway.

I looked at the floor. ‘My jumper – ’ I said, ‘it’s a bit chilly out there.’

I knew she was staring at me.

‘I’ll leave it.’ I began to retreat. ‘Sorry.’

As I was closing the door behind me, she called my name. I hesitated on the landing before answering, to give her time to put her dressing gown back on, then I spoke into the small crack in the door. ‘I’d better get to work.’

‘Come back in.’

‘I’ll be late.’

There was a silence before she said, ‘Please.’

I stepped into the bedroom. She was still standing in front of the mirror, one hand on her rounded belly. The dressing gown in the Kathryn-shape remained splayed out on the bed behind her.

‘Do you want to feel the baby?’ she asked.

I looked at her. She wasn’t smiling but her eyes were soft. I lay my jacket on the bed beside her dressing gown, put down my briefcase, and shut the door carefully behind me before approaching. She watched my reflection in the mirror as I moved towards her. I noticed that her breasts had spread out across her chest and the nipples were so dark they looked like flattened poppies.

‘My hands are cold,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

There was a streak of talc running from the top of her thigh to her knee and I wanted to reach out and rub it away, but she led my hand to her stomach. Even her fingers were softer and rounder; as her hand clasped mine, I thought of plunging my fingers into warm earth.

‘Can you feel it?’

I waited. Her stomach was hot, and my hand was heating up.

‘Not yet.’