Once Catrin and Sol had settled into their joint practice for a couple of years, they’d thought the time had come to start a family. So she’d done everything by the book: came off the Pill, stopped drinking, started taking folic acid, even took up running! They were only thirty when they began ‘trying’. Which was great fun. Neither of them would deny that. They’d make charts and take temperatures, sometimes rushing home in the lunch hour for quick sex – they even did it once in the surgery, which was so tense and risky they laughed throughout the entire process.

But despite their commitment and determination, nothing happened. Month after month they’d both wait, Catrin praying to her recently rediscovered Catholic God to ward off that familiar dull throb at the base of her abdomen that heralded yet another unwelcome period.

‘You can’t have the sunshine if you don’t have the rain,’ her dad would whisper during those sad times, when he’d engulf her in a big fatherly hug and kiss the top of her head, just like he had when she was little. But the rain fell torrentially and the sun remained absent from her sky. She waited and waited for it to come back, only to be defeated by disappointment again and again.

After three years of trying everything – strange diets, uncomfortable sex positions, meditation and more prayers – they’d finally surrendered to the idea of IVF. And once she’d come to terms with the fact that IVF didn’t mean they’d failed, only that they needed a helping hand, Catrin’s optimism was renewed.

But the first attempt was unsuccessful.

And so was the second.

And then the third attempt failed too.

So Solomon took over, sitting her down and gently saying it was time for them both to stop trying. They’d used up all three NHS opportunities – now they had to think about other options.

But Catrin wouldn’t hear of it and was undeterred in her mission. And it was a mission. Becoming a mother was all she lived for – she was obsessed. She went ahead with making appointments, applying for loans, pressing Sol’s parents, as well as her own, for financial help, despite Sol asking her not to. Edward and Amelia were the only ones who could afford to help, but they gently turned them down for religious reasons, which Catrin found offensive, flying off the handle when they said no and refusing to speak to them ever again.

‘They’re scientists, for fuck’s sake! Doctors!’ she screamed.

Sol saw a side to his wife he’d never before witnessed and moved out for a month. Even this did not stop her. Undeterred and in desperation, she asked Judith and Lana both separately if they could help. Knowing that they had less money than she did, but having lost all dignity, Catrin cared nothing for the embarrassment caused when both friends declined. More IVF was all she could talk about or think about, to the point where she stopped looking after herself, sometimes going days without washing, calling in sick to work, wearing the same stained shellsuit every day and barely leaving the house – spending hours on the phone to clinics and loan companies, ordering hundreds of books and magazines, arming herself with knowledge and shutting out the rest of the world. Until her energy finally fizzled to a standstill and she gave up all hope. She sank into a deep, dark pit of despondency. No longer manically determined to pursue her quest, she simply lost the will to go on.