In Cathy’s room.

Catharina’s room.

Catharina.

I’d always known that was my mother’s full name but before I met Hessel I had never once heard it spoken out loud.

I tried it out, quietly, with just my lips and teeth and breath, no voice, saying it the way that Hessel had said it, with the hard T.

Catharina.

Catharina van Leeuwen.

It was the name of a complete stranger.

A sob caught me by surprise. From somewhere deep, my diaphragm did something weird and I gasped and tears leapt from my eyes. I stood quickly, shaking my fingers and walking up and down, two steps each way in the tiny room, breathing slowly through my nose until the danger of crying had passed.

That curry. That damn stupid curry.

I had to get out. I pulled on my ugg boots and slung Nassim’s hoodie around my shoulders, then stepped through the dim and empty kitchen and outside into the moonlight.

What was that? Why hadn’t I been able to take the pill? Why hadn’t I swallowed it? I would have been done. I could have been done with this. I could have been in control of my life again.

It wasn’t that I felt it was wrong in any way. I felt fine that this little clump of DNA was no more or less than the bacteria that covered every living thing, just as amazing and astounding and improbable, but also just as oblivious and expendable.

So it wasn’t a moral problem. It was just . . . something unexpected. I had been surprised to find that I recognised a feeling. It was love, or something like it. Love, growing physiologically inside me. A piece of Nassim. A piece of me.

I crossed the paddock in the milky light and, with Bette’s revelation about Danny playing in my mind, I carefully sat on the bottom rock of the cairn.

The stars held their gaze steady. I pulled out my phone. No bars. Using my thumbs instead, I wrote out in our shared message field what I was bursting to actually tell Nassim: the simplest, truest thing I was feeling.

I love you. I’m sorry.

I was going to erase it, of course I was. I just wanted to look at it, think about it, to feel like I was talking to him, but at the end of the line, out of sheer habit, my thumb automatically pressed send. Oh god. Instantly an exclamation mark appeared beside the message. Message not sent. Thank god for no reception. I held my thumb down on it, but a bar appeared, and before I could select ‘unsend’, the message delivered. Oh shit. And then the bar disappeared again. Shit.

Okay. That was okay. It was late at night. That could be undone. I clicked ‘Delete for everyone’ and then waited for a bar to appear. Nothing.

I turned and looked at the cairn behind me. Was this cairn dangerous? I would be careful. I could be careful. I had to find some reception. I had already done it with Basil.