I stood there with that test between my fingers and the two lines showing, and Kevin spent the better part of the day picking me up and carrying me from one room to another.

He put the tea towel down.

He crossed the kitchen in about two steps.

He took the stick off my palm and held it up at the window as though it needed light, and then he said, “Meg,” and then he said nothing else at all for some seconds.

Then he picked me up.

Not a hug.

He actually picked me up, with one arm under my knees, which he had not done since our wedding and which he was not in any sense fit enough for, and he carried me out of the kitchen and into the front room and put me down on the sofa as though I were made of something.

And then he got the throw off the back of the armchair and put it over my legs, in August, and I laughed at him until I cried.