I tell Max about the baby. I think he should know. I’ve been offered a teaching job in London, he says. Just for a year. I think perhaps he hasn’t heard me; I say it again. I heard you. Come to London with me. I’m not going to London. Is it mine? It could be mine. Come to London and have the baby there and it will be ours. I will take care of you and the baby. Begging, almost. I’m not going to London. And it could be Henry’s. And what about your wife? Max makes a sound. She is with someone else now.

There’s no time to think; there is too much else to consider. A new life in London, with Max, a baby, him all to myself. All to myself? Do I want all of him, all the time? Do I want to wake up with him every day? Listen to him chew his food every night? Fight with him about money? Raise this child with him? Something tells me he wouldn’t even stick around for all of that. He is too generous with himself, with his time, his thoughts, generous in the sense of being unable to restrict himself to just one person. For all his faults, Henry would assume his responsibility.

I shake my head. You don’t want me, not full-time. You only want me because I’m not entirely yours. Because I’m needed elsewhere.

That’s not true, says Max. I want you all to myself. I need you here. Or, rather, in London. But he himself sounds unconvinced.

I’m sorry. I’m not going.

And that is how I know it will come to an end, when he leaves for London. But we still have time. And when the nausea is elsewhere, my pregnant body wants him so badly that I wonder if he is indeed the father, that my body has recognised him, or if this is simply my desire leading me astray, as usual.