I suppose I was meant to say, Don’t be mad, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you: exams, university, career, plenty more fish in the sea . . . But I didn’t. I didn’t feel that way; I was shocked, yes, but the truth was I felt glad for them in that moment. I felt emboldened by them.

I picked a petal off my lap and gently rubbed its smoothness against my upper lip. I thought of all the relationships that would be changed by a baby aside from his and hers – Ness and I would be for ever entwined, Karl and I, Karl and Ness, Ness and Leah, Leah and Karl – and my head began to spin. I reached out and took his hand in mine and lifted it to my lips. ‘Everything will be all right, whatever you decide, Josh. You hear me?’

He smiled and put his arms around me and pulled me close. I rested my head against him and felt more peace right then than I can remember. Both of us were quiet, listening intently to the tinkle of the brook, interrupted sporadically by Annie’s husky voice confidently bossing around Mental Sita: ‘Fetch! Good dog!’

I suppose I’m not the same person as I was before, Dr. R. I suppose middle-class sixteen-year-olds are not meant to keep babies in our society, are they? It’s against our principles of focused achievement. Then again, middle-class women aren’t meant to have breakdowns and become family annihilators, are they? Oh no, we leave such nastinesses to the others, to the uneducated, to the neglected, so we can get on with listening to The Archers and running the show; let the disenfranchised, the dispossessed conceive young! The disappointment for them is so much less when the show implodes because their lives were shitty to begin with. And what, after all, Dr. R, is this show we are so eager to get up and running?

Another breath of wind rained pink petals down on us. For the first time I thought seriously about getting out of here, of finding somewhere to live, of getting better, of being a parent again, a grandparent if need be, of what else was waiting for me, getting myself back to work. A future.

‘Hurry up and get the hell out of here, will you?’ he said, as ever in tune with me. ‘Ness told me to tell you that you can stay in her parents’ cottage when you get out . . . down in Suffolk. They said it was fine.’

I was surprised by this. I thought about it. She hadn’t mentioned this to me.

What do you think Ness wants from me, Dr. R?