‘I’ve been going through it for weeks now. I thought I’d have an abortion. But I don’t want to. Not after Mum going. It just feels – it shouldn’t only be us two left. I have this awful feeling that somehow it might…’

‘What?’

‘It’s stupid. Like what if she was trying to come back and I prevented it.’

I looked away from her, at the little bookcase filled with children’s novels about ballerinas. I left the room and came back with some tissues.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. Will you tell the dad?’

‘Do you think I should? Do you think he has a right to know?’

‘I don’t know. It depends. Is he a wanker?’

‘Why would I sleep with a wanker?’

‘For sex?’

‘You would sleep with a wanker for sex. He was nice. It just wasn’t the sort of relationship either of us were intending a lifelong connection to result from.’

‘And are you excited? About having a child?’

‘I’m terrified. It’s going to be hard. But yeah. I did want to have one at some point. In theory.’

‘Congratulations, then.’

‘It’s so sad too, without Mum. Who am I going to ring up when I don’t know what I’m doing? Who’s going to help me out?’

‘That’s what I was thinking. Your friends?’

‘I keep imagining what she’d have said when I told her. Our conversations. Remember her stories about how easy it is to give birth? About what a fuss modern mums make of it. She’d have driven me crazy with shit like that.’

‘She was only twenty-five, wasn’t she?’

‘With you.’

‘With me,’ I said.

‘Imagine.’

‘Weird to grow up so much earlier than our generation.’

‘No wonder she thought we were whingers.’

‘She hardly thought you were a whinger, Amy. She was in awe of you, how tough and effective you are.’

‘I feel very far from tough. I feel like I’ve been whacked with a hammer all over. God, it would have been so much easier with her here.’

She reached down to take a sip of her tea and put her other hand to her eyes.

‘But look,’ I said. ‘I’ll come to the hospital, for the scans, for the birth, for whatever. I’ll come and stay with you if you want. I’ll do everything I can, I’ll be there all the way…’

She turned away from me and put her head in the pillow, and I knew then what small consolation I could be, how my good intentions were only a little more use to her than indifference. I put my hand on her shoulder anyway, all I could do to let her know I was there with her.

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‌Seven