A long silence. Then she said: ‘I’ll be there in an hour.’ And I knew that between us we would find a way to fix this. Then I went outside and hailed a taxi, thankful they took cards now, and directed it to Pimlico.

The white stucco house glowed in the moonlight, and I couldn’t see a single light on. I leaned hard on the doorbell. Nothing. Then I remembered the side return.

It was open, the gate unlatched. As I crept around to the back door, over their neat patio, I realised how easy it would be to just walk into most people’s lives. We are too trusting. We think everything is locked up and safe and we take it for granted, until something goes wrong. The kitchen blinds weren’t pulled and I could see into their home, their lives. The glow from the kitchen light showed me a bottle of whisky with the seal pulled off, standing on the counter. I turned the door handle and it opened.

‘Hello?’

The kitchen looked neat as always, a rinsed mug sitting on the draining rack. I wondered if Jodi had gone into labour, then calmly cleaned up before taking herself to hospital. It was the kind of thing she would do.

I moved into the hallway; the place was silent. A dim light was on in Callum’s ‘den’, a room he’d done up in leather chairs and books, like a drinking club.

‘Cal?’

He was there, slumped in a chair, wearing a crumpled suit. He was drinking, of course. A large whisky. It seemed clichéd – as if even at that moment, Callum was concerned that someone would see him and know him for a man drinking the correct drink for a moment of emotional breakdown. I stood and let him see me, which he did slowly, blearily. ‘Al.’

‘Jodi’s in labour. She’s at St Thomas’s.’

He nodded into the whisky, swirling it. I wondered if he even liked whisky or just pretended to. ‘She’ll be OK.’

‘Well, she might not be. It’s a high-risk pregnancy – she’s forty-two. I can’t believe you left her. What were you thinking?’

It was a larger question that I was asking, really, and Callum must have known this because he didn’t answer. He seemed weary, beaten somehow. ‘She’ll be OK,’ he said again. ‘She hardly needs me.’

‘Of course she needs you! She needs someone to advocate for her, make sure they keep to the birth plan, and . . .’

‘I’d be no good at that. Don’t know anything about kids. It’s not even mine.’ He slid the last in matter of factly, as if he thought I already knew this. And had I, before Jodi said? On some level, had I suspected? I seemed to remember Karen saying: I guess they’re doing something. Something covered a lot. Interventions. Petri dishes. Donor sperm.