Arriving at my door, Oscar looked jittery.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

He stared at me. His eyes twinkled. ‘You.’

‘Me? What have I done?’ I asked, slightly amused. We had been spending an increasing amount of time together recently but I still sometimes found Oscar hard to read.

‘I’ve got you on the brain. Can I come in?’

I invited him into my flat. Sometimes I felt a little embarrassed when he came here. My Brixton pad in no way matched up to his swanky crash pad in Marylebone. But it was great that he finally wanted to talk about the ‘us’ that had so far been off the table.

‘I’ve been struggling to fathom a life without you in it,’ he said, holding my hand tightly.

‘If you’ll have me back, I’d really love for us to give it a go. I want to bring up this baby with you, Lucy,’ he said.

We talked for hours that evening about how it would work, and Oscar convinced me he was ready – ready to be a father and a committed partner again. It was butterfly-inducing.

I melted into his arms and inhaled him several times. But as he hugged me, stray tears silently fell from my eyes onto his cashmere jumper. Happiness, it seemed, could be bittersweet.

Now officially back together, and with my three-month scan in the bag, I at last felt able to let my bump blossom. That’s why, when the news finally came out at work, people naturally assumed he was the father. The situation suited us both and I convinced myself that I felt happy and settled. Yet a fear that maybe Oscar didn’t really want any more children sometimes crept back into my mind, when I thought how home life would change for us once the baby arrived. No more spontaneous mid-week meals out to Michelin-starred restaurants, or sexy European minibreaks. Life would come with cots, nappies and prams for the foreseeable. I hoped that Oscar had got his head around it.

A couple of months after we had rekindled our relationship, Oscar asked if I fancied bringing up the baby in a bigger home – a joint home, rather than my small flat – and I was happy to agree; it was my suggestion that we rent a house together in Clapham – close to the ‘Nappy Valley’ area of London. We found the perfect house and moved in a few weeks later.

From there, with the secret still swirling inside me, I had an idea and decided to join a local Baby Group.

Thursday 13^th May

The next morning, I saw Oscar off on his trip with a long, passionate kiss and promise of an X-rated FaceTime call. There was still eleven days until my C-section on 24^th May, unless anything happened earlier. While I was feeling excited about meeting my little man, the feeling of anxiety followed me around like a gradually swelling dark rain cloud.

I was making my morning decaf when my phone lit up with a message on the Baby Group thread: