Could it be possible that it actually was her? A million-to-one coincidence?

Destiny?

He’d never made any attempt to find Lynette – he’d never even known her surname. And in any case, he was well aware it had only been a teenage obsession at best. But suddenly the sight of this woman had reminded him of that summer. That girl. Those fumbling, tantalizing moments when she had touched him, that he had replayed in his mind countless times. And still occasionally did when he was making love to Claire. All that Lynette had promised. And never delivered.

A horn blared behind him. A large white van.

The lights were now green.

He raised an apologetic hand and, as he drove on, shot the woman another quick glance.

Followed by a longer one.

Could it possibly be her?

He felt stirring in his groin. He was aroused.

5

Friday 7 December

Georgie Maclean finally got the watch restarted, although to her annoyance it had frozen again and not recorded all the details of the past two miles of her daily morning run. And, incredibly, given her current condition, just when she was sure she had smashed her previous five-mile time.

Whatever.

She was still shaking. Shit. That idiot in the Porsche. She patted her midriff again, where tiny life was just beginning, a few millimetres in size but growing daily.

At forty-one, she was only too aware her biological clock was ticking away crazily fast now, like it was on speed. Which was why it felt so very good to be pregnant, after years of yearning for a baby. She’d left it late, and hadn’t even started trying until she was thirty-three, after she’d finally found Mr Right, the man she wanted to have a child with, back in London. Mike Chandler, a teacher at a tough comprehensive. She’d been working as a PE teacher back then. After years of no success, her gynaecologist discovered she had a tilted – retroverted – uterus but did not operate as he did not feel that should stop her falling pregnant. But still nothing had happened. Then Mike had been diagnosed as having a low sperm count. When that had been sorted, it was discovered she had hostile mucus.

She recalled going to see a sweet, elderly specialist up in Hampstead, who had helped a close friend with her fertility issues. As she’d lain in his reclining chair, feet up in stirrups, while he inspected her with a vaginal speculum, tut-tutting, she’d exclaimed in anger that she couldn’t see how the hell anyone ever got pregnant. And always remembered his words, in his strong Scottish burr: ‘You have to understand, Mrs Chandler, there is an awful lot of copulation that goes on in the world.’