The last of the sun rippled around us, picking out the beads of water in his hair. I put my face in the hollow at his collarbone. I could be yours and you could be mine, I thought as we moved together. I had hung on to the news that some nights I couldn’t have been more his and discarded all the other words that had hurt me.

I wanted a way to bind us together again. I needed it for the sake of the children who didn’t like the chill in the kitchen. Bridie advised a bit of action – always better than words, she winked. I knew I was pregnant as we walked home through the river field, the last of the lilac cuckooflowers nodding in the dusk. Within weeks, the acid nausea of morning sickness, always absent when it was one of the boys, convinced me it was another little girl I was carrying.

I knew that he might not be best pleased but my head kept telling me that it didn’t matter! Nothing mattered except the precious girl growing beneath my heart. That she was his filled me with joy. I’d give him something he’d never known he wanted: a daughter with his own blood running through her veins. I’ll take the slap when it comes; she’ll be worth it. She will set me back on the right road with her father, on the right path of my life. She is the step I have to take.

Then she left me.

I called out to John, screamed for him, where I lay bleeding in the vegetable garden. He came running from the river field but he was already too late. He rushed me to Omagh Hospital but nothing could be done. It was over. I wasn’t even kept in overnight so we had the long drive home to suffer in the dark, just the two of us alone. We both knew it had happened when we made love on the cool of the river bank. We both knew that I knew what I was doing. We both knew that I’d planned it, I was an old hand at getting knocked up. But now our water baby was gone and we mourned the loss of her. I would have called her Roisin, my little rose.

–  Why didn’t you tell me? said John.

–  What difference would it have made?