Abruptly, however, Dominic shook his head. He grabbed Jasmine up from the floor and away from Veronica’s leg. “We don’t need anything,” he told her.

Dr Shirazi filled in a blood test request and handed it over his vast desk towards her. The table top was a physical manifestation of chaos. Brown paper files towered in one corner, post-it notes littered the surface, and atop it all, was a scattering of dropped shells from the nuts the doctor was steadily eating. He was, she had heard, the best in the business.

“There’s probably nothing wrong,” he told her, with a slight accent she presumed was Middle Eastern. “The itching, that’s the key, that’s what tells me the problem.”

“What is the itch?” she asked. “I was thinking some kind of nutritional thing?”

“It’s unlikely to be nutritional,” he smiled.

“Oh.”

“More likely, your mind is telling you that before you’re ready for a baby, there is an itch you need to scratch.”

Veronica raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“It’s quite physical sometimes, the goings-on of the mind. And now it’s telling you, quite clearly, that there is something you need to deal with. Something you need to let out. Something stopping your body from doing what you want it to do. Maybe you don’t actually want your baby quite yet.”

“I absolutely do want a baby. Now.”

Dr Shirazi manoeuvred another nut into his mouth, gathering the shell into a growing pile and regarding her closely. “You had a miscarriage, how long ago…” He checked his handwritten notes. “Almost a year. Have you said goodbye to that baby yet? Have you let go of your fear that it will happen again? Have you acknowledged the disappointment? How are things with your husband?”

Without warning, tears threatened at the corners of Veronica’s eyes. Missing nothing, the doctor handed her a tissue and she laughed with embarrassment, forcing a cough to keep the tears at bay. “Things have been tricky,” she admitted, intensely uncomfortable. “Strained. But improving now.”

Dr Shirazi nodded. “The body has to be ready to receive something new. You need to scratch the itch. Metaphorically,” he clarified. “Don’t actually scratch or you’ll damage your skin. Further. I see it’s already very raw.”

He picked up his voice recorder and spoke into it a rambling series of notes for his secretary: book follow up appointment for Veronica Reddington, inform me as soon as bloods are back, attach information for grief counsellor. Veronica looked at his pile of shells and attempted not to raise her eyebrows again. She had been after action that morning, not airy fairy chatter, and she wasn’t sure she would be able to take seriously the mystical ponderings of this nut-eating man. On the other hand, if she did take him seriously, then she was now both affronted and infuriated. How dare he suggest that she was sabotaging her own chances of pregnancy, as though through some kind of emotional deceit, it was her fault? She longed for a baby with at least part of her consciousness every minute of every day. There was no part of her resisting. She was ready. But people swore by him.