‘You know what else I think would be pretty amazing?’

‘What?’

‘You as a doctor. I can really see it. It’s really right for you.’

I lay on my front on my camping mat and looked into the fire. Basil lay next to me on his, and then he sat up and looked sideways at me, just like Nassim had that first time in English.

‘Anna. I think you should tell Nassim,’ he said.

I looked at him. ‘Tell him . . .?’

‘About the pregnancy.’

I shook my head. ‘Nope. I can’t. And even if . . . No, it’s already too late. We broke up.’

‘Does that feel right to you? To be broken up?’

‘It doesn’t really matter what I feel like. It’s what’s happened. It’s what had to happen.’

‘That’s bullshit, Anna. You’re kind of taking the easy way out.’

I looked at him, confused. ‘That’s the easy way?’

‘Yeah. It really kind of is. And look, even if you’ve decided that breaking up is what has to happen, you should still tell him about the pregnancy. Not because he has any special right to know, but because secrets are bullshit.’ I looked at him and he was nodding seriously. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You know it. I know it. If anyone on this earth knows it it’s you and me. Secrets are bullshit.’

And it was so clear. He was right. He was so right. Secrets were bullshit. That’s all they were. Bullshit unnecessary complications that made big fucking messes. They were just a way of turning a problem into a different, wider, more complicated one.

I was nodding to myself. It was a revelation. ‘Secrets are bullshit,’ I said out loud, like Basil had just handed me the meaning of life. I had kept how I’d felt about Mum’s drinking a secret, for years and years and years, from her and everyone else, and where had that got me? Bullshit. Mum had swallowed the biggest secret of all, and had to keep it in there with work and alcohol, nearly destroying herself and everyone around her. Bullshit. I had run away, broken up with Nassim without telling him, treated him so badly, just to avoid telling the truth: that I was pregnant and worried that our relationship was going to cost me admission into medicine. Bullshit.

‘That’s what I think, anyway. You should totally tell him,’ said Basil.

‘Maybe I should. Maybe that would be okay.’

‘And he was involved. Let him have some of the stress of it too.’

I nodded slowly. Basil was right. He was so right.

‘You should do it now,’ he said.

‘What? Like, right now?’

‘A secret is a secret until it isn’t,’ he said.

I shook my head, but Basil nodded at me and nodded at me until finally I said, ‘Well, you know I totally would, but, oh well, no reception.’

‘There’s reception upstairs.’

‘What?’

‘Upstairs. Reception.’

‘You’re fucking kidding me, right?’

‘No. It’s not great. But it’s pretty good. Good enough.’