“The losses you had were not caused by anything you did. Not stress. Not working too much. Not something you ate or didn’t, or a feeling you had or didn’t have.

This was physiological, and it was present before either pregnancy. There was nothing available at the time that would have changed the outcome.” He paused.

“I’ve met many patients who spent years believing their body failed them on purpose. I’d like to spare you the rest of that particular sentence, if I can.”

Beside me, Sophie had gone completely still. Not the stillness of shock — the stillness of a person setting down something she has carried so long she’d forgotten it had weight.

I didn’t understand yet how much of our marriage had just been re-explained. She did. I watched it move across her face.

For three years she had believed, somewhere beneath the language she allowed herself, that the losses were a verdict on her. And I — God help me — had buried myself in work rather than say the one thing that might have contradicted it, because I hadn’t known it needed contradicting.