Everybody seems to have been up late tonight. Petra called as well and George, who never sleeps at all any more because of Cuthbert.

Petra was hugely relieved. “The right decision, Sam,” she said. “I might as well tell you now. If I’d gone to LA with anything other than a developing foetus, they’d have withdrawn their funding.”

I’d unplugged the phone in our bedroom and was having a last whisky (which I’ve been allowed since making my last deposit) when George phoned.

“Well done, mate,” he said.

I told him it was what I felt like writing.

Somehow I think that now everything will be all right.

Dear Penny

Today I got my period.

It started at about eleven this morning. It came without warning but it’s a heavy one and it means that all my dreams are dead.

I’m not pregnant. I’ve never been pregnant. The two embryos I called Dick and Debbie died a week ago.

I sat on the lavatory for about an hour, crying. I don’t believe I’ve ever cried as much in my whole life as I did today. My eyes are swollen and sore. They feel like they have daggers in them.

I wasn’t just crying for the loss of the babies that never existed. That was only the beginning of my trouble, the beginning of the nightmare that was today. I’ve been crying for the loss of my whole life, a life I thought I knew but it turns out I didn’t know at all.

I’m writing this alone in bed. I’ll be on my own from now on. Sam isn’t here and he won’t be coming back. I don’t know where he is and I don’t care. I’ve left him.

I’m going to write down what happened so that I never forget.

After I’d cried so much that I thought I would dehydrate I knew that I should tell Sam. We’d been through it all together and I felt that he’d want to be with me at the end of it. Besides, I needed him. Having gone about for a week half believing that I had a child inside me, or even two, I suddenly felt more desperately alone than I could have imagined possible.

But when I spoke to his office at Broadcasting House I was amazed to discover that Sam no longer worked there. The woman I was speaking to said that he’d left weeks ago. She didn’t want to tell me where he was, either, as she said it was very private. I told her that I was his wife and I was ill and that she had to tell me where he was. She gave in in the end but she didn’t want to. I could tell that she was wondering why Sam’s wife didn’t know where he was, or that he’d changed his job. I was wondering that too.

When I was riding in the taxi I think I believed he was having an affair. That’s what I expected to find at the address the woman had given me. Sam in the arms of another woman. I wish that that’s what I had found.

The address was a film location. A big warehouse in Docklands with the usual trucks and trailers and generators outside and inside, a vast darkened hangar where a number of sets had been constructed. There were people everywhere. I passed a group dressed as nurses and as I walked in I could see immediately that one of the sets was a hospital operating room for women, with stirrups and that sort of thing. I stood there for a while, hidden in the shadows, not knowing what to think, not really thinking at all. Everything was so confused, and I felt scared. Scared of what I was about to discover. Slowly it all began to swim into focus. I could see that all the lights and the attention were concentrated on what was a bedroom set, a bedroom very like my own, in fact. There were two actors on the set, one of them, to my astonishment, Carl Phipps. The other was a woman I recognized as Nimnh Tubbs from the RSC. Someone called for quiet and the two of them began to play out a scene. It was a rehearsal. I knew that because I could see that the camera was not being operated. Carl sat at a desk and pretended to type into a laptop.

“What the hell do you find to write about?” he said. “What an emotionally retarded shit I am, I suppose. I know you secretly think I’m holding my sperm back. You think their refusal to leap like wild salmon up the river of your fertility and headbutt great holes in your eggs is down to a belligerently slack attitude which they’ve caught off me.”

I could feel myself going cold. Surely that was exactly the sort of thing that Sam always used to say to me? What was going on? Why was Nimnh Tubbs sitting on the bed holding a journal just like I do every night? Just like I’m doing now, in fact.

Then a young Scottish man who was clearly the director stepped into the scene.

“Obviously we’ll pick up a reaction from you there, Nimnh,” he said. “Semi-distraught, emotionally dysfunctional, pathetic little woman stuff OK?”

Nimnh nodded wisely. She knew that type.

Perhaps I’m stupid. Maybe the last few months have made me stupid, but at this point I still didn’t know what was going on. I just stood there, convinced that I was in some horrible dream. They started rehearsing again, more words I knew.

“I just happen to believe that when God made me he made me for a purpose beyond that of devoting my entire life to reproducing myself.”

And she replied, “When God made you he made a million other people on the same day. He probably doesn’t even remember your name.”

Then I knew. Those were my words! My actual verbatim words! Just then I saw Sam. I don’t know whether I’d realized what was going on before or after he appeared, but either way I was no longer confused. I knew what had been done to me.

The director had called Sam over. Nimnh was having trouble with the motivation behind the scene and the director wanted her to hear it from the writer.

The writer. I was the bloody writer.

“You see, to me, Nimnh,” said the man who had been my husband, “this scene represents the beginnings of her descent into a sort of sad madness, a kind of vain obsession. To me the line about not crying outside Mothercare on the way to the off licence is crucial…”

Then I realized the full extent of his betrayal. I’d never told Sam about Mothercare and the off licence. I’d only told you, Penny. He’d read my book.

Sam wittered on, posing importantly, loving himself.

“Don’t forget that this woman is beginning a journey that will see her lose all dignity and sense of previous self,” he said. “Before she knows it she’ll be making a fool of herself at hippy visualization classes, adopting a baby gorilla and claiming it’s got nothing to do with her infertility. She’ll have reduced her sex life to a series of joyless, soulless, cynically calculated servicings, treating her poor, hapless hubby as some kind of farmyard animal, brutally milked for its sperm…”

They laughed at this. They laughed at it all. Why wouldn’t they? It’s funny, I suppose.

It was then that I walked forward on to the set. I still can’t decide whether it was a good idea, but I was in a daze. Some young woman with blue hair and a walkie-talkie tried to stop me, but I was not to be stopped. They all heard the young woman’s protests and turned and saw me. I don’t know what Sam thought.

But I knew what I thought. One word.

“Bastard,” I said. It was all I could say. “Bastard.”

Carl was nearly as surprised as Sam was, but I had no time for him. My whole being was taken up absorbing this new Sam, this Sam whom I’d never known.

“You bastard, Sam, you utter, fucking bastard.”

I hated him and I still hate him. He tried to speak, but I wouldn’t let him.

“I got my period if you’re interested,” I said. “We failed. Dick and Debbie didn’t make it.”

I didn’t care that the director and Carl and Nimnh and the woman with blue hair could hear me. I didn’t care about anything. They all began to turn away with embarrassment, but I told them to stay. I told them that they might as well listen now because they’d hear it all soon anyway, that Nimnh would be saying it all tomorrow.