It was me.

It was my numbers.” His head went down.

“If there’d just been something different about me, none of it would have had to happen to you.”

I had heard him say a version of this before.

Four times, that I can count.

Once in the car park of the clinic in the second year, when it was fresh.

Once very late at night in the fourth year, after a bottle of wine, when it came out badly and we had an argument about it.

Once to Brian, in our own garden, when he thought I was inside and I was not.