I have no idea who ‘someone’ is in this context. I have no one in the city to call. Dad? The very thought is a joke. The idea of him helping me in a medical crisis involving my pelvis is… no. It’s taking all my optimism to picture us having a pleasant dinner together tonight. Mum? She’s away with her two best friends for a weekend in Daylesford, a long-overdue birthday present that she’s been saving for and planning for months. I am not ruining her weekend and asking her to drive two hours to me for what might be a weird flash of period pain, or bad gas, or simply my body violently rejecting the idea of being a runner.

I’m writhing a little in the grass now, which sounds like it could be sexy, but it’s most definitely not. I can’t get comfortable. I shimmy around until I’m holding myself at an odd angle, grimacing.

‘Don’t call anyone,’ I say.

A new thought hits me. A nightmarish thought. What if I’m one of those people who got pregnant without realising it and now I’m about to give birth? No, not possible. Tristan and I had sex a total of four times last year, and each time we did, we were incredibly careful. We were so careful we were smug about it. I even took pregnancy tests to be doubly sure. And I’ve gotten my period every month, heavy and unpleasant and like clockwork, for the past year. But, but, but. All those horror stories they told us in school. That one video I saw online. That you can get pregnant even when using a condom, you can get pregnant even if they pull out, even if you’re on the Pill. You can somehow be pregnant and not have a single symptom or gain any weight or notice anything different or lose your period or get a positive pregnancy test. Yes, all of those things at once are extremely unlikely but not impossible. I could be the outlier. Someone must be the one in a million, and it’s me and it’s now and my life is over.

I look up at Jesse and try to imagine saying the words I’m giving birth. Or worse. I’m giving birth and there’s no time, you’ll have to deliver the baby, here, at the Tan, with attractive runners passing us in their matching bike shorts and crop tops—please limit the number of people who will see my vagina. I can feel a rising hysteria, which might flow out of me as laughter or tears, I’m not sure which. I’ll be the girl who gave birth at the Tan. My child will be known as the Tan Baby. The story will go viral, and worst of all, Jesse will be the hero.