Her sensitivity to smells and tastes has grown stronger with each week. Looking down at her waistline beneath the seatbelt, she pinches the band of thickened flesh between her thumb and index finger. It astonishes her, the rapid advance of her pregnancy, changes discernible on an almost daily basis. That morning, she had been woken by the press of her bladder, as if she had downed a few pints before retiring for the night. And several times in the office that week she had felt so overcome with weariness that she might have lain down on the floor beneath her desk and fallen fast asleep.

She hasn’t told anyone yet about the baby. None of the girls in the office know, or her old school friends, with whom she has kept in touch sporadically. Definitely not her parents – she cannot begin to think how she will handle that conversation. Briefly, Leah wonders whether Jake is telling Jenna. Perhaps that is the reason he is taking so long. But she knows he won’t. They have agreed to keep it a secret, just between the two of them, at least until the first trimester has passed. Thinking of Jake alone in there with his ex inspires some anxiety within her, even though she knows there is nothing to be fearful of. On the calendar of her phone she has marked in the date of her first hospital appointment – less than four weeks from now. A date she leans towards, impatient, excited. But, until then, she is reliant on websites for information, loitering in chatrooms, pitting her own symptoms against the experiences of others.

The sun is getting high in the sky and, while she waits for Jake, she takes out her phone, looking to google the latest symptom. Is it normal to feel this level of exhaustion so early in her pregnancy? And the weight she is putting on – surely it’s not possible for her to start showing yet. But when she opens the browser on her phone, she’s confronted with the results of a previous search – Anton’s full name slotted in the search engine. In the early hours of the morning, when she couldn’t sleep, her thoughts had turned once again to what Hilary had told her. The occupant of the house upstairs, his troubled history. Her thumb hovers over the screen.