She has not burdened George with these moments. She has not written them into her letters home. She has not told anyone. Because of course, that’s why the miscarriage was a secret: pain was far too unattractive an emotion to share.

Veronica stopped tormenting the candles and moved to the window seat in the front room. It was still a good twenty minutes until Sarah was due, but she glanced up and down the street anyway.

George had performed commendably over the past four nights during which sex was required. The haloed week of ovulation had crept doggedly towards them, thin white sticks decreeing when the moment had arrived, and as always they accepted the declaration like a deserved punishment. Veronica hated that this is what their sex life had been reduced to. She hated more that George didn’t do a better job of pretending otherwise. Even on the nights when she attempted to set the mood, wearing a silky piece of something small, he waited for her to spell out what was needed, never seeking her out, never desiring her. Even once she made it clear, he seemed to approach the bed with a heavy sense of duty. The worst nights were when they’d been quarrelling, over nothing usually – a disagreement about weekend plans, a misunderstood word, an excuse for being late – but in a way that manifested all of their unsaid frustrations. In the old days, if she was annoyed at George, there was no way she would then have had sex with him. Perhaps at the end of an argument, in the throes of apology or rekindling, but not while still charged with anger and venom and blame. Fertility, however, only peaked for a few days – the sticks told her so – so there was no time to wait for an organic resolution to their quarrel, she couldn’t afford to abide her emotions or exert any choice; sex was necessary. She hated this. It stirred something dormant inside her. She hated submitting her body when her mind screamed otherwise. She lay there, but she hated it, and sensed him hating it, and for those moments hated him too. She prayed nevertheless, for a baby, half his.

Veronica heard the bathroom door upstairs close and George’s feet travelling back and forth across the bedroom. Now that the prime period of fertility had passed, the dynamic between them had shifted slightly, easing into a brief interlude of respite. It would intensify again in a couple of weeks as the time to test for pregnancy approached, mired always in the weight of their combined hope, but neither of them would mention the harried anticipation they carried. Neither of them would speak it. After all, anxiety was as unattractive as grief. Not jolly or good company. Far better to get on with things, not minding about trivial matters such as changing schools or moving house or living without one’s parents.

It had taken them twenty months to conceive the first time. It had been almost a year since the miscarriage.