Lying in the bath, sunlight from the window flashing in the water and lighting up her pale body in brilliant patches, she moved her hands over her belly. And she felt it – something. Just a little bit, but there was a lump, a fullness.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ She was filled with panic. Tears rose in her eyes. She had felt alone in her life many times, but never so much as now. What in the name of heaven was she going to do?

‘Katie?’ He was knocking at the door. The two Welsh lodgers must have been out for the afternoon and they had the house to themselves. ‘Tea – can I bring it in?’

‘Yes,’ she called, immediately pulling herself together. She couldn’t let him see yet, or anyone else.

Simon came in, looking oddly overdressed in the bathroom, since she was naked. He perched the cup and saucer on the corner of the bath.

‘You look lovely,’ he said. ‘I almost feel like getting in with you.’

‘I’ll be out soon,’ she said, not encouraging him. She certainly wasn’t in the mood for any playing about of that sort.

‘OK, I’ll just go and run my eye over the paper while you finish off.’ He leaned down and kissed her on the lips. ‘Don’t be long though, will you?’

In his bedroom, wrapped in a towel, her hair hanging loose down her back, she sat on the bed looking at the sunlit poplar tree gently shifting in the breeze at the bottom of the garden. He would soon come up and would want to make love, because he always did. Ever since they had begun on it together, his appetite had never diminished. She was flattered by his wanting her: didn’t it show how much he cared for her? But this was something different altogether. Could she tell him? He kept saying over and over that he loved her, but could she rely on him? Why was she so full now of all the doubts she had pushed aside, the ones that didn’t fit the romantic picture she had clung to?

She didn’t feel in the least like lovemaking, but she knew it was inevitable so that he didn’t become suspicious. What she longed for was to be looked after, for him to come up, and for her to spill out the truth to him and have him say that everything would be all right, that he loved her more than anything and would always be with her. It was such an immense thing to say and it would change everything. Why did it feel so impossible to come out with it? Didn’t she trust him in this test? He might be kind and sweet and true. But what if he wasn’t? What then? She could hardly bear to ask herself the question.

His tread was approaching up the stairs; the door opened. She kept her back to him.

‘Oh, look at you,’ he said, the desire already evident in his voice.