It was with unhidden, tightly entwined hands that they waited for the results of the tests for STDs, preparing themselves for the worst. But in the end, it was the other results that destabilised them: George’s tests, for which they were unprepared. These fell casually through the letterbox a few days later and were followed by a much less casual visit to the clinic. He wasn’t infertile, Dr Shirazi explained when called upon to do so, not completely, natural conception was still possible even. But it might not be as easy as they’d hoped.

Veronica felt sick about that.

She felt sick and a little dizzy.

Even when she lay down to sleep, the nausea remained with her.

A few weeks later, she didn’t even need to take a test to know that of course she was pregnant.

Veronica

George knelt before her, his arms wrapped around her waist. He should already have left for work, but was there in his shirtsleeves, on the floor, bent low.

I’ll have you begging! I’ll have you on your knees and broken!

The pregnancy test was in his hands. He couldn’t stop looking at it. Veronica cupped her own hands around the slightly greying blonde of his head.

“Not broken,” she said. “We’re not broken.”

“What?” George looked up at her. He wouldn’t stand, or couldn’t. “Veronica, it’s fucking his.”

There was a trembling to his voice that Veronica had never heard before, unrecognisable from the boy who’d shot bloodied down a rugby pitch, or the man who’d swept into Kenya, or stood just weeks earlier towering over Terry. Veronica was unrecognisable too. She felt her mood swinging violently and bitterness creeping beneath her skin, like all the hands that had ever touched her uninvited. But she fought hard against it. She followed up with all the police inquiries, channelling her rage into action, resisting the temptation to plaster it beneath blankets of muting patchwork. For all their combined pain, George at least was still here, still talking, still talking to her. Veronica found herself musing that this is what it must have felt like to grow up being Sarah.

“It might be yours, George. I think it is yours. Don’t you? We never even have to find out anyway, if you don’t want to. We’re going to be okay.” She said this to her husband with more confidence than she felt, removing one hand from his head and placing it onto her stomach where despite ambiguous paternity, there once again was a poppy-seed-sized hope. “We are. Going to be okay. All of us. Somehow.”

George shook his head, unconvinced, but he rested his lips on top of her hand and kissed it. Veronica leant down and kissed him. And finally, George stood.

They were in the living room, the afternoon glow of summer sun illuminating the smooth wood of the floor. Behind them was the carefully chosen coffee table, and the shelf lined with favourite books they’d once imagined lying entangled on the sofa and reading. Outside the window, somebody glided by on a bicycle. In the distance was the melodious tinkle of an ice cream van. A few minutes later, there was a gentle clipping of passing feet. And then, a soft closing of a nearby door.