Not My Daughter

by Kate Hewitt

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

‘ THE book of the year!… I don’t think I have ever cried as much… heart-breaking and unputdownable… To say this story is a five-star read is an understatement. There are not enough stars in the world to show how much this book has touched me. ’ Sinfully Wicked Book Reviews, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

My darling girl, you lie so still, lashes fanning your cheeks, golden hair spread across your pillow. You’re so beautiful my heart aches. Your breath is so soft I can barely hear it, but at least I can see the steady rise and fall of your chest, every breath a promise. You’re still here. I’ve still got you. For now. Milly has always dreamed of being a mother. Adopted, she longs for a powerful connection with a child of her own. So, when she and her husband Matt are told they can’t have children, she’s heartbroken. Milly can barely believe it when her best friend and Matt’s brother offer be donors. With everyone accepting and open, Milly believes nothing could go wrong. But none of the four are prepared for their feelings when Milly gives birth to beautiful baby Alice. Then, when Alice is still a little girl, she receives a devastating diagnosis. Milly’s whole world falls apart, and each of them is forced to face what it means to be a parent, and make impossible choices… for themselves, and for Alice. An unputdownable, heart-breaking, but ultimately uplifting story about the power of love and the true meaning of family. Fans of Jodi Picoult, Diane Chamberlain, and Gracie’s Secret will never forget Not My Daughter. Readers are loving Not My Daughter : ‘ This book had me crying so badly. It broke my heart, never has any book been able to just wipe me out with such gut-wrenching sadness. A book of love, loss, and loyalty… BEAUTIFULLY DONE.’ Netgalley reviewer, 5 stars ‘An amazing and gut wrenching emotional story… So powerful… An emotional unforgettable book. I literally absorbed this book in one night. One beautiful written story of compelling motherly love.’ Gwendalyn Books, 5 stars ‘This is one of the best books I've ever read... no exaggeration. I was captivated… Wish there were more stars to give it... Amazing.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘The complexities of the situation are written in a truly beautiful, insightful way… Not My Daughter really stands out in terms of… how such an emotive, raw situation can also be turned into something kind of beautiful… It was real, and brutal, and heartbreaking, but it was honest, which made it all the most devastating to read.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘ A tragic, aching, emotional journey of love, discovery, heartache, forgiveness and hope. I couldn’t put it down and I didn’t want their story to end. I LOVED IT! ” Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘This book made me cry, my heart is all wrenched out, my emotions are so raw that even breathing feels like a friction burn.’ Book Reviews by Shalini, 5 stars ‘ An emotional rollercoaster from beginning to end. When I wasn’t reading, I was constantly thinking about Anna, Milly, and Alice… I didn’t want the story to end.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘A beautiful novel... It’s incredibly moving, heart-breaking... I was so absorbed in the story I found it impossible to put down and when I wasn’t reading I was thinking about it. It made me think, it made me cry, and it made me thankful for my own healthy children. The story will stay in my thoughts for a long time.’ Netgalley reviewer, 5 stars ‘ OMG… This book has me feeling every kind of emotion... Have a box of tissues ready…Truly beautiful.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘It was so compelling… An emotive rollercoaster of a read. I’m sure I felt my heart literally break.’ By the Letter Book Reviews, 5 stars

Release date: May 2, 2019

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 337

Sample

It’s bad news. I can tell from the doctor’s face, and I clench my fists in my lap as I wait for it.

‘I’m sorry.’ Dr Finlay, or Meghan as she asked us to call her a while back when we started this laborious journey towards having a baby, makes a little moue of sympathy, causing my stomach to clench along with my fists. That bad?

Silently, Matt reaches over to hold my hand, threading his fingers through mine. My palm is icy and damp, my heart starting to thump. I was hoping for good news today, news about how there was nothing to keep me from being pregnant, from us being a family, after months of consultations and charts and tests and waiting. So much waiting.

‘After looking at the results of Milly’s pelvic scan,’ Meghan begins, her gaze moving between the two of us, ‘I think I can make a certain diagnosis.’ She turns to focus on me, her mouth turned down at the corners. ‘I’m sorry, Milly, but based on what I’ve seen in the scan as well as the hormone levels we’ve been monitoring over the last few months, I can now confirm you have Premature Ovarian Insufficiency.’

‘Pre… what?’ I stare at her blankly. We’ve talked about monitoring my ovulation, and trying to relax, and maybe, just maybe, starting a prescription for Clomifene. Dr Finlay – Meghan – has assured me that at thirty-four I’m still on the youngish side to conceive, and I have every chance – her words – that it will happen. And now she’s telling me something else, something worse? The dread that was swirling around in my stomach coalesces into a cold, hard ball.

‘Essentially it’s premature menopause, although we don’t like to call it that because menopause is its own natural process, and this, of course, is something else.’

I swallow, clinging to Matt’s hand, my only anchor in all this uncertainty and ignorance. ‘So what does this mean? I go on Clomifene?’ I ask, hearing the hopeful note in my voice and inwardly cringing at it.

‘No, I’m afraid that’s not a possibility now, with the level of deterioration already present.’

Which sounds awful as well as final, and that is even worse. ‘So what happens now?’ I ask, although I’m not sure I want to know.

Meghan hesitates, and in that tiny pause I hear all I don’t want to know. She’s breaking the bad news to me. I can see it on her face, in the way she places her hands flat on the table, as if she has to brace herself, when I’m the one who is going to need to absorb the hit.

I slip my hand from Matt’s and clench my fists in my lap once more. I’ve been so determined, doing everything right, whether its prenatal vitamins or avoiding caffeine, making time to relax or meditate, or whatever else the latest expert says will help, but in this moment I know none of it’s going to matter. It’s not going to count the way I thought it would.

‘In terms of your own pregnancy,’ Meghan says in that careful voice a medical specialist uses when the news isn’t good, ‘I would suggest using an egg from a donor.’ She turns to Matt. ‘If you feel that is the way you want to go forward. Obviously, you’ll need to take some time to consider, but there are other options as well…’ She continues on about egg donation, and IVF, and then surrogacy and even adoption, all the alternatives no one wants to consider, but at some point in her recitation my mind blurs and blanks. All I’m hearing is that I will never be pregnant. I will never have my own biological child, borne of my body, sharing my blood.

Twenty minutes later, Matt and I are both standing outside the clinic, an icy, unforgiving winter’s wind off the Bristol Channel buffeting us.

‘Do you want to go home?’ Matt asks after a moment, as we simply stand there. ‘Or we could go out for a coffee…?’

‘I don’t want to go out for a coffee.’ The words burst out of me in a snarl, surprising us both. I’m not angry at Matt, though; I’m just angry. ‘I’m sorry.’ I take a deep breath, willing back the tidal wave of emotion. ‘Sorry,’ I say again.

‘It’s okay,’ he says gently, even though it isn’t, and then he takes me by the arm as if I’m an invalid or an old lady. I’m not – it’s just my eggs that are old.

We drive in silence back to the three-bedroom semi-detached house in Redland, one of Bristol’s family-friendly neighbourhoods, that we’d bought two years ago, when we’d started thinking about families and babies and all those optimistic next steps.

We’d sold our one-bedroom flat in Temple Meads and bought the kind of house you had kids in, on a leafy street, with a garden, in walking distance of the local primary, in the catchment area of a good secondary. There’s a village hall where they do toddler groups and Girl Guiding, and a playpark right around the corner. It was all the way I’d imagined my life as a little girl, and now none of it matters.

‘Do you want to talk about it, Mills?’ Matt asks after a few minutes.

I stare out the window as I shake my head, my mind numb and frozen, refusing to move past the dead-end diagnosis we’ve just been given.

‘No. Not yet.’

‘Do you want to ring Anna?’

Anna, my best friend since year seven, the only person in the whole world besides Matt who has always had my back, who has never let me down. I know she will hug me, cry with me, and pour me more wine, but all that understanding might break me right now. I feel fragile, everything in me brittle, ready to shatter, but I know I’ll need her. I nod, sniffing. ‘Yes. I’ll ring her soon.’

Back at home I get out of the car first and walk quickly inside, flinging my keys on the hall table as I breathe in the scent of lavender cleaner – organic, of course – and lemon furniture polish. Home. Except everything feels changed now; everything feels like a horrible mockery… the garden perfect for playing, with space for a swing and a sandpit, the shallow stairs safe for children, the third bedroom we intended to be a nursery. I haven’t been so foolish as to paint the walls or buy a cot, not when I haven’t even been able to get pregnant yet. But I’ve dreamed. Oh, how I’ve dreamed. And that’s all it’s ever been – dreams.

Matt comes in behind me and heads for our open-plan kitchen and dining area, with plenty of light and room for a high chair, a playpen, a rattan basket for soft toys. I’d pictured it all in my mind so perfectly.

The French windows that overlook our tiny terrace were another plus, and we talked about sitting out there on sunny Saturday mornings with our coffee, our child on a swing in the horse chestnut tree at the bottom of the garden. Now the house I’ve loved so much has become a cruel reminder, taunting me with all the what-ifs that have suddenly turned into nevers.

I draw a quick breath, and it hitches like a sob. Matt turns from the kettle he’s been filling at the sink.

‘Milly…’

‘No. I can’t. Not yet. I’m sorry.’ I’m not ready to talk. I’m not ready to dismantle my dreams in a pragmatic conversation as we discuss a forward plan the way I normally like to do, complete with bullet points. Someday, but not yet.

I go upstairs, to the room we planned on being a nursery. There is nothing baby-friendly about it now; it just has some plastic storage bins, a few empty suitcases, and Matt’s saxophone stand gathering dust.

I stare at the empty room for a moment and then slowly slide down onto the floor, my back against the wall, my knees drawn up to my chest. Outside, bare branches tap against the window as the wintry gusts of wind rattle the pane. I rest my chin on my knees, drawing another breath. This one doesn’t hitch.

I’m not going to cry. I know if I cry I’ll have given up, and I’m not ready to do that yet. Not after everything. Not even if I will have to eventually.

I’ve been so good. I want to shout the words, but at whom? Who will listen? Who will care? I know life isn’t fair, not for me, not for anyone. I’ve seen too much suffering in the news, too much casual cruelty in the world around me, to think otherwise, but I realise now that some small part of me believed if I played by the rules, if I did everything right, if I was kind and loving and respectful and all the rest, I’d get the deep desire of my heart. I believed there was some overarching justice I could appeal to, that I could count on, some cosmic jury that would decide in my favour. But today tells me there isn’t. There can’t be.

I’m in menopause, no matter that Meghan didn’t want to use that word. I’m thirty-four and my eggs are withered up, dried out. Useless. So useless, in fact, that there is less than one per cent chance of me conceiving naturally. I remember Meghan telling me that.

The door creaks open and then Matt is there, crouching next to me with a cup of tea. As I take it, tears sting my eyes.

‘I wasn’t ready for that news,’ I say, my hands cradled around the warmth. I blink hard, because I’m still not ready.

‘I know.’

‘I won’t be able to get pregnant.’ I say the words as if I’m trying on an outfit to see if it fits. It doesn’t. It’s tight and scratchy and I want to rip it off right now.

‘Dr Finlay didn’t say that exactly.’ Matt has never called her Meghan. ‘She discussed other options…’

‘But it won’t be my baby.’ I wasn’t able to take in all the details that Meghan outlined, but I understood at least that much.

Matt rests his hand on my knee, warm and solid. ‘It would be,’ he says gently. ‘You of all people should know that.’

Yes, I should, because I’m adopted myself. I don’t know who my birth parents are. I chose not to find out. And my adoptive parents, my real parents, are wonderful. They always have been, strong and supportive and loving. So, yes, I of all people should not have a problem with the idea of adoption.

Except I do.

But I don’t expect Matt to understand that, and I’m not sure I could articulate it even to myself. Not now. Not yet.

‘We don’t have to rush into anything,’ Matt says, and somehow that hurts too. We don’t have to rush, because it’s already too late for me.

I rest my head against the wall and close my eyes. I feel exhausted, my body aching, my eyes gritty.

‘Do you want me to call the school?’ Matt asks. I only took the morning off for the appointment; I’m due back after lunch to take my Year One class, a prospect that now fills me with dread. I’m not ready to face twenty-eight five- and six-year-olds with their constant chatter and piping questions, but I can’t afford to take off the whole day. And while curling up under my duvet is very tempting, I know it would just make me marinate in self-pity. I don’t need that.

‘No, it’s okay. I’ll go in.’

‘What about Anna?’

‘I’ll ring her soon.’ She knew about the appointment today, of course; my phone has already pinged with a text from her asking how it went. Over the last year and a half, I’ve kept her informed of every torturous step on this journey, all the hope, all the disappointment, and she’s cheered and sympathised in turns. I know she will be there for me now, but her unwavering sympathy might send me over the edge, into the abyss of grief I sense is waiting for me.

I finish my tea and make to get up; Matt holds out his hand. As I take it, I realise with a painful jolt that this affects him too. He won’t be able to have a child, his wife’s child. Infertility isn’t just my problem, even if it’s my fault.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and he looks at me in surprise, his hand still holding mine.

‘For what?’

‘For not… for not being able to…’ I can’t finish the words; suddenly I’m crying, all sobs and snot, my shoulders shaking as Matt pulls me towards him and I collapse into him gratefully. I wasn’t able to keep it together for that long, after all, and I need this hug, his arms around me, holding me together.

‘This isn’t your problem, Milly. It’s ours. We’re in this together. And we’ll find a way through, whatever happens, together. It’s all going to be okay, I promise.’

I press my face against his shoulder, willing myself to stop crying, determined to take comfort from his words. Because I believe him. Stupid me, I believe every word he says.

When Milly finally sends me a text, hours after her appointment, I know it must be bad news. I can tell, just by the three bleak words, with no added detail: Meet up later?

Of course, I type. What time?

Five? comes the quick reply. I usually finish work later, but I can leave a bit early.

Sure, I text. Do you want to talk about it now?

Several minutes pass before Milly replies. No. Later.

It must be really bad, then. Oh, Milly. All she’s ever wanted is a baby, a family. She talked about it even when were in year seven – how she wanted three children, because two didn’t seem like quite enough. Because she’s never had siblings. Because she’s wanted to see what someone related to her looks like. Would they have her wild hair, her slightly crooked front tooth? Every time she talked about it, her eyes would light up and her expression would turn wistful. I can’t wait.

What if it can’t happen now? What will she do? I’ve had a front row seat to Milly and Matt’s fertility issues over the last two years; I’ve known how anxious she’s been, and how hard she’s been trying to relax. I’ve even known when she’s ovulating.

Most of all I know how much Milly has wanted a baby, what a great mum she would be, and if this news is really bad, I know how devastated she will feel.

I also know how much I will need to be there for her, as I always have been, as I always will be, because Milly is my best friend and she’s been there for me time and time again, starting when I showed up to the first day of secondary school looking as overwhelmed and lost as I felt, and Milly marched right up to me and declared that we were going to be friends. I stared into her small, determined face, and felt a wave of relief break over me. It was going to be okay now, I thought. Finally something in my life was going to be okay. And it was.

That evening, I weave through the tables in Harveys Cellars, the underground wine bar in Bristol’s old city that Milly and I have always used as our regular. I find her in the back, legs wound around a high stool, sipping a large glass of red wine. Her expression is closed and shadowed, her wild, dark hair tamed into a neat ponytail. When she looks up at me, I see a terrible depth of grief in her eyes, and wordlessly I pull her into a quick hug.

She returns it tightly, burrowing into me for a second, before she pulls away, dabbing at her eyes. ‘I don’t want to fall apart completely,’ she explains in a shaky voice, and I ache for her.

‘What are you drinking?’ I ask.

She shrugs. ‘The house red, whatever it is. I wasn’t too bothered.’

Matt’s the foodie of the two of them, insisting on pairing a proper wine with whatever meal they’re having. I’ve eaten enough happy suppers at their kitchen table to know how he likes to talk about bouquets and hidden notes and all the rest of it. ‘All right,’ I say, trying to pitch my tone somewhere between cheerful and sympathetic. ‘I’ll get one, and a refill for you.’

Milly shakes her head. ‘No, I’m driving. I can’t get drunk, as much as I want to.’

When I return to the table with a glass of wine, Milly has nearly finished hers, and she sits with her chin in her hands, her expression resigned yet determined. She almost looks angry.

‘So the news wasn’t good?’ I knew she’d gone in for a discussion about the scan she’d had a week ago, along with a battery of other tests. Milly had been buoyant, determined to get some answers and finally be able to deal with the situation, but I’d felt more cautious. I always do. Milly can get carried away on a tide of resolute optimism, while I tend to hang back. Wait. Observe. I think that’s why we’ve worked as friends; we balance each other out.

‘No, it was just about the worst news I could get.’ She glugs the last of her wine and then looks up, her face bleak. ‘I can’t get pregnant, Anna. There isn’t even the smallest chance.’

‘What?’ In shock, I listen as Milly tells me all the details – even I, in my cautious, over-worrying way, hadn’t thought it would be as bad as that. ‘Milly, I’m so, so sorry.’

‘I feel selfish, being so sad about this,’ she says as she rotates her wine glass between her palms, her gaze lowered. ‘I mean, this is a first-world problem, you know? So I can’t get pregnant; there are other solutions, and having a baby isn’t everything. I know that. I do.’

‘But it’s still your problem. Your grief.’

‘Yes.’ She presses her lips together. ‘It’s just… it’s so hard to let go of that dream, you know? A baby that’s like me and Matt. Someone who is actually related to me. It’s never going to happen now.’ She sighs, a shuddering sound. ‘But I’ll get over it. I have to.’

She straightens her shoulders, determined, as always, to be brave. I reach over and squeeze her hand, and she gives me a quick, trembling smile.

‘So what are you going to do?’ I ask after a few minutes of heavy silence. ‘Have you thought ahead yet?’ Milly is a determined planner, marching towards some shining destination or other – a promotion, a bigger house, an exotic holiday, a marathon. Whatever it is, she has always gone after it with resolute optimism, taking Matt along with her, and often me. When I would have just wavered or wobbled or simply stood still, Milly has pulled me along. I don’t think I would have survived secondary school without her. I almost didn’t.

‘I don’t know. Dr Finlay mentioned some options, but I can barely get my head around them.’

‘Adoption?’ I suggest, and her expression tenses a little.

‘I don’t want to adopt.’ For someone who is adopted herself, she sounds surprisingly firm. She holds up one hand as if to forestall any protests I might make, although I wouldn’t. ‘Look, I’m very glad I was adopted, of course I am, and my parents are wonderful. I love them to pieces. But it still has its complications, you know?’

‘Yes, it must,’ I say after a moment. Milly’s adoption has not been something we’ve discussed very much in our two and a half decades of friendship. She told me quite matter-of-factly that she was adopted that first day of year seven, and that seemed to have been both the beginning and end of the subject, a fact that had to be got out of the way before we could move on to other, better things.

‘It’s just…’ Milly blows out a breath. ‘Mum and Dad never wanted me to look up my birth mother, and so I never did.’

‘Did you want to?’

‘Yes, when I was a teenager, I became curious, but I could see that it would devastate them.’ She purses her lips. ‘And it’s not just about that. It’s always been such a thing. I can’t explain it exactly, but I’ve always felt this… this weight. The fact of my adoption always has to be trotted out at various events, in schools, with friends. “These are my parents but I’m adopted.” It’s the hashtag to my life.’

‘I didn’t realise.’ I’m surprised Milly has never told me this before; she has always acted as if her adoption didn’t matter, and I genuinely believed it didn’t. I love Milly’s parents. They practically became my own in my turbulent teenager years, when my parents were constantly battling each other and then me. They’re low-key and loving, warm without being effusive. Her mum sends me a birthday card every year, and always hugs me when she sees me, a real hug, the kind where you know the person means it. The kind I never got from my own parents.

‘I don’t talk about it that much because I feel guilty for feeling that way, even just a little. And it is only a little, really.’ Milly lets out a sigh. ‘My parents have never been anything but completely loving and generous to me, and I know that if I did adopt…’ She pauses, her forehead furrowing, her voice catching. ‘It’s just, I really wanted to feel that connection. My child kicking inside me… knowing they were and always will be a part of me.’ She swipes at her eyes, the gesture impatient. ‘If we adopt, I’ll never have that. I won’t have it anyway. I can’t now.’ Her voice breaks and she covers her face with her hands. ‘Sorry,’ she gulps between her fingers. ‘I really didn’t want to fall apart. I’m trying not to. It just keeps hitting me, over and over, a shock every time.’

‘You don’t have to be strong all the time,’ I tell her gently, and Milly does not reply. I reach over and touch her arm. I want to make this better for her; I want to solve it, the way Milly does so often with me. How many times has she brainstormed with me, found solutions? You want to meet more people? Let’s join the gym. You don’t like your boss? Let’s look into changing jobs. The gym worked out, the job change didn’t, but Milly is always about answers. Without her, I’d just stay in stasis. ‘There must be some way forward,’ I tell her, injecting a Milly-like note of determined optimism into my voice. ‘Some kind of IVF… there are so many fertility treatments these days…’

Milly shrugs, dropping her hands from her face. ‘Dr Finlay mentioned the possibility of IVF with an egg donor, but that seems a bit weird, you know? I just place my order for an egg, from someone I’ll never even know? Besides, the waiting list is something like two years minimum, and it’s incredibly expensive if you do it privately.’

I try to dredge up everything I know about egg donation, which is very little. ‘Still, you’d get to carry your own child.’

‘Someone else’s child,’ Milly interjects, and I shake my head.

‘It would feel like yours. You’d be the one growing a baby, giving birth. Really, donating an egg? It’s practically like giving blood.’

Milly gives a small smile. ‘Not really, Anna. It’s quite invasive, from what Meghan said. I can’t imagine doing it myself, knowing there was a child out there that looked like me, that was mine in some way… not that it’s a possibility now. Obviously.’

‘Still, I don’t think it’s like that.’ I’m not sure why I’m being so stubborn. I don’t know the first thing about egg donation.

‘Perhaps not, but with the waiting list and the expense… I’m not sure it’s really viable for us.’ Milly shrugs, and I sip my wine.

An idea is forming in my head, taking shape like an elegant sculpture emerging from the mess of damp, wet clay, but I know I need to think about it. I certainly shouldn’t blab it out to Milly right now, when she’s feeling so raw and I don’t have all the facts.

But this is Milly, my best friend, the one person in the world who has been there for me, time and again. I picture her in year seven, shouting at some mean girls poised to bully me. I remember her in year nine, when someone wrote something rude about me in the boys’ toilet – completely unwarranted at the time – and she marched in there and covered it with Tippex. And then I recall how she found me at my absolutely lowest point, how she rescued me from the depths of my own despair, and never asked any questions, because I couldn’t bear to give her the answers.

‘What if you didn’t have to go on the waiting list?’ I blurt, knowing I should think through this first, but unable to stop myself.

She stares at me blankly for a second, before her eyes narrow. ‘What do you mean?’

I hesitate, knowing I shouldn’t be suggesting such a thing so soon, without doing any research, without thinking about how it might affect me or Milly, but I feel in the depths of my being that this is the right thing to do. For Milly. And maybe even for me. ‘You said you can go privately with these things, right?’ A cautious shrug is her assent. I can tell she still doesn’t know where I am going with this, and I wonder if I do, really. And yet I keep talking, because for once I can make it right for Milly. For once I can be the one who rescues. ‘If you have someone who is willing to donate an egg, you don’t have to wait – or pay. Right?’

Milly stares at me for a long moment, and I know she is starting to realise what I am getting at. She is beginning to see the sculpture. ‘Right,’ she says slowly. ‘In theory.’

‘Well, that would be something, wouldn’t it? I mean, if you wanted to go down that route…?’

Milly leans forward, a new urgency lighting her eyes. ‘What exactly are you suggesting, Anna?’

‘I could give you… an egg.’ It makes me sound ridiculous, like a chicken. ‘If you wanted.’

Milly stares at me hard, her expression almost fierce. ‘Do you really mean that?’

Do I? I’m not even sure what it might entail, how I would feel, and yet… ‘Yes. Of course I do, Milly.’

‘But…’ She shakes her head slowly. ‘It’s an invasive procedure, Anna – weeks of hormone injections, monitoring, all sorts. I understood that much from what Dr Finlay said.’

‘I can manage that.’ I feel as if I’ve just catapulted myself into the deep end, the water closing in over my head, but I don’t regret it.

Milly’s eyes fill with tears and she shakes her head again. ‘That’s so, so kind of you, Anna. I mean it. But it’s not something we should decide right this second. I’d be asking a lot of you, and I don’t mean the injections. It’s such a big thing, for both of us. A really big thing. Bigger even than, I don’t know, a kidney or something.’

‘Technically,’ I joke, ‘a kidney is bigger than an egg by quite a bit.’

‘Yes, but… you know what I mean. DNA. A baby.’ She bites her lip. ‘That’s big. It would have… repercussions. Emotionally, I mean. It’s not something to jump into.’

A baby. The words reverberate through me and I have to look away. Yes, that’s big. I know that more than Milly will ever realise, and it’s another reason to say yes. One that Milly will never understand, and I will never explain it to her.

So I just smile and squeeze her hand. ‘You’re right, of course. We should both think about it, do some research. Know what we’re getting into. But the offer is there. I’d be honoured to do this for you, Milly.’

She smiles back at me, tremulously, and I push away any niggling doubts as I realise I mean every word. I want this. For Milly… and for me.

My mind is racing as I drive home from being with Anna, and I feel a surprising rush of something close to elation, so unexpected after the despair and grief of earlier. . . .