4.00 pm

‘Anything in your pockets, sir?’

Aidan shakes his head, scans the tray.

‘And your shoes, sir.’

He looks at his feet, then up again at the security officer. Stupidly, he says, ‘Shoes?’

The officer nods. ‘In the tray, sir.’

There is always something you forget: belt, wallet, jacket, take your laptop out, liquids. Shoes. He bends to untie laces, then stands and pushes them off with his toes, a habit from childhood. At one point, airports had had a thing about umbrellas. All the weapons. Aidan drops his shoes into the tray, pushes it forward onto the conveyor.

‘Step back, sir. Wait for the signal.’

Aidan steps out of the numbered circle, stands vaguely, waits for another nod from another security officer. Who waves him into the scanner.

‘Hands above your head, sir.’

Aidan has never been called sir so many times in his life. Was it true the scans showed your body on a screen somewhere, should he care about this? What would it take for him to stop following instructions? As he steps out, Aidan sees that, mercifully, his tray has made it unscathed. Now there is the scramble to reassemble yourself. Why is it that putting your jacket back on always feels too hot on this side of security? Aidan casts a glance at the huddle of people waiting for the extra checks on their bags, feels a little grateful after all, and walks into the main terminal. It’s slightly disconcerting to realise you’re on a balcony, John Lewis to your left, the lights of Leon below. Aidan turns right, feels the relief as he pushes open the door of the airline lounge.

‘May I see your boarding pass, sir?’

The Irish accent feels friendly, one of us, it says. Not that the English were rude or anything. Just English, he guessed, used to being more direct. Like Sophie, asking him out on Friday: ‘I’d like to get to know you.’ Perhaps it was just that she was younger.

‘Do you know the lounge, sir?’ Aidan nods that he does. ‘Well, enjoy, and please remember that we don’t call short-haul flights, so keep an eye on the board.’

‘Thank you,’ he says, pulling his case behind him, heading for the bigger armchairs near the window. It’s almost empty and you have to wonder if they get the revenue to keep a large lounge like this. They save on the food, he guesses, just a few crackers and those mini-cheeses. Still, a full bar.

His phone had buzzed this morning, one of those reminders of the past, ‘Discover 2 years ago’, which he’d clicked on before thinking that maybe he didn’t want to remember two years ago. But it was only a photo taken out of a plane window, impossible to know where. He thinks of the other photo he saw this morning, a status update. Blue-and-white swimsuit, large bump, a tagline that said, FOUR YEARS AND FOUR IVF CYCLES, FEELING VERY LUCKY.

Aidan gets up again, crosses to the kitchenette, takes a bottle of sparkling water out of the mini-fridge. Goes over to stand at the window. He should do something practical like get food for the plane. He should text Ruth, tell her he’s on his way. But no, he’ll only be interrupting her, and anyway she keeps her phone off during sessions. Maybe he should get out his laptop? But he’s called in sick, he doesn’t want to confuse them by checking out any files. Work is not the solace for Aidan that it is for Ruth. She withdrew to it like a fucking bunker. ‘I’m working,’ the failsafe mantra against talking things through. Though, to be fair to her, he reminds himself, she’d needed something to succeed. On the concrete, a plane begins to taxi.

Aidan had really thought – had meant it when he promised – that they would stop at two. But the second cycle had been cancelled when there weren’t any viable embryos, so of course they had kept going. And each of those times, he had put all his love into the rituals of follicles and collection and maturation and fertilisation. And each time, the same emotions. Hope. Fear. He could not have predicted that hope would be the worse of the two. Every time the phone rang with an update, he’d felt the double wave rush through his body. And watched as Ruth’s face brightened, turning her beaming grin on him, or darkened, her whole body shrinking inwards.

The third cycle had been tough, Ruth’s hormones like a nightmare rollercoaster. But at the end, there was a positive test, the line darker than the last time, and Ruth saying it felt different, felt right. When they went to the clinic, her hCG levels were high and continued to rise like they were meant to. The wave of hope, pure hope, was real this time. At the ten-week scan they had heard the heartbeat, fast and strong. At the twelve-week scan, they’d heard it again, and seen the blurry black-and-white shape of their future. They had started to tell people. To make lists of their favourite names. Niamh. Mia. Luke. Aidan had knelt by the bed, whispering the words over Ruth’s abdomen like some kind of Merlin. Thirteen weeks of happiness.

She must have been in pain for a while before she’d told him. Aidan remembers the look of certainty on her face as he’d groped for possibilities. But it was unavoidably real when that night he’d watched her have those awful mini-contractions, seen the clots that came after, changed the towels he’d laid under her. For the last part Ruth had sat on the toilet, Aidan on a chair in the doorway. She’d caught the little thing in her hands, a tiny shrimp. All he could think to do was wrap it in tissue. The next morning, as Ruth slept, he’d taken the bundle to the hospital. He must have sat in the car for nearly an hour, unable to go in, unable to say goodbye.

Why have he and Ruth never talked about that morning? And why, afterwards, did everyone treat Aidan like he was only a spectator, even Ruth? No, that wasn’t fair, he’s not being fair again. Still, though, there is something in it that feels true.

The quiet in the lounge feels kind of eerie now, reinforcing the limbo inside. How unhappy is too unhappy?

The screen still says GATE IN 10 MINUTES, but Aidan picks up his case anyway. He will go down, find some relief in the terminal’s noise, the distraction of other people’s lives.