‘Mario, I’m so sorry!’ She buried her own distress, desperate that she had caused this reaction. It was a shock to see him like this, but also strangely warming to know he cared enough to cry – a reminder of the old Mario, with whom she had laughed and loved every day of their newly married life. ‘I never dreamt this would happen – I didn’t give it any thought.’

‘Clearly,’ he managed.

‘I am sorry,’ she repeated. ‘This isn’t like you, love. I understand you being angry, but I can’t remember the last time I saw you so upset.’

She watched as he anchored his palms on his thighs and let his tears fall.

‘I thought,’ he began with a croak to his voice, ‘I thought something terrible had happened, and I remembered the last time I got called home, when you lost the baby.’

His words were a jolt. She would not have guessed that this would be at the front of his thoughts. It had been nearly two decades ago when she had called him at work and he’d rushed home to drive her to the hospital, where he’d sat on a green chair by the side of her bed, holding her hand and kissing her palm, repeating, ‘It’s all going to be okay . . . It’s all going to be okay . . . We have so much to be thankful for, my Bessie . . .’

And she had heard his words and nodded, feeling guilty that a small part of her was enjoying the peace of the room, the quiet away from the kids and the fact that someone was giving her permission to lie in a bed and close her eyes in the middle of the day . . . No washing up to be done, no dirty laundry, no scrubbing of the bathroom, no preparing food – all she had to do was lie still and rest. While terrible, it was a welcome break. She had waited an age for the porter to come and wheel her into the operating theatre and all while the iron scent of her loss clung to her nostrils and tainted each breath. It had made her want to vomit, this repulsive smell of warm blood that was the sticky essence of life, but on her legs, her stomach and pooling on a plastic-backed pad over the mattress and not where it should have been, inside her womb, nurturing that little baby. It was a scent that was as distressing as it was familiar. It was when she got home that her unravelling had begun – that was when fun Bess had first left the building.