Chapter 1

My husband's first love sent him an ultrasound of their baby while I sat locked in a ladies' stall, losing ours. Ours was twelve weeks. Nobody in the banquet hall knew it existed, and there was almost nothing left to know. Under the grey little picture sat one line. Don't tell her yet, I'll handle my wife after the speeches.

I was the wife. Past the door, two hundred guests were toasting his parents' anniversary. I was a thing to be handled after.

Julian's phone was on the cistern because my husband handed me his things whenever there were cameras in a room. It had buzzed once, polite, and lit. The name at the top of the thread was Serena, his first love from the years before me. The picture was a curl of white in a black cone. A heartbeat, somewhere across town, going on.

Mine had stopped going on during the soup. I had smiled through the cramps, blamed the wine, and walked out slow so my dress wouldn't swing. I had planned to tell him tonight, in the car, on the drive home. There was no telling now. There was a stall, and blood, and a screen glowing above the pipes.

I did one thing before anything else. I took mine out of my clutch and typed the line in, letter by letter, comma and all, and saved it. Then the screen went dark, the case was only dark green leather again, and shoes stopped under the door.

His shoes. They stopped first. Then the knock came, twice, soft.

"Ivy?" His voice was kind. It was always kind. "You've been gone twenty minutes. Are you all right in there?"

I folded a wad of tissue and pressed it where it was needed. "Fine. The zip caught."

"The photographer's setting up. Mum wants everyone on the floor before Dad's speech." A pause, gentle as a hand on a shoulder. "You know she counts heads. Can't do the family photograph with a gap in it."

"Two minutes."

"Take your time, I'll wait. I told the photographer to hold — he's got us before the cake, then Dad talks." The shoes shifted on the tile but didn't leave. "You feeling okay? You barely touched the soup."

"The soup was cold," I said.

"Mum's had the florist redo the arch since the toasts. Same roses as their wedding, apparently. She told the story twice."

"I heard it." I flushed, and let the water cover whatever my voice was doing.

I cleaned myself up as far as a stall allows. Tissue, more tissue, my thighs wiped down with the cheap paper until it shredded. The hem of my dress carried a dark stripe the width of two fingers. I turned the seam so the stain rode against my leg, hidden in the fold. It was drying already, going stiff, going brown.

I took it off the cistern and stood one breath with it in my fist. Black, heavier than mine, still warm from its own light. Then I slid the bolt.

He was at the sinks, squaring his cuff in the mirror, and he smiled at me in the glass.

"There she is," he said. "You look pale. Do you want water before we line up?"

"No."

"We're between the aunts again this year. You on my left, like always. Smile at the middle camera — there are three."

"Go ahead," I said. "I'm right behind you."

"Ten years, same spot." He held the door for me with his whole arm, the way he did when people could see. "Mum repainted the mark this morning, you'll be pleased. Gold, fresh, exactly a hand-span. She'd repaint the whole floor before she'd move it an inch."

Every September, my place was that painted cross on the pale parquet. Every year after, my seat was the passenger seat of our car, his hand patting my knee at the lights. Ten years. I had thought that was a marriage.

I walked beside him toward the music with our child ending inside me, and I told him nothing.

His hand closed warm over mine — the hand with his phone in it — as he steered me toward the ballroom, saying they couldn't start the photograph without me.