‘Eight.’

‘So if all goes to plan, you’ll have your baby easily in time for Christmas?’

‘Yes,’ she murmured, thinking there would be nothing easy about it.

After she and Tom had said goodbye, her mobile rang again. This time it was Mum, and hearing how worried she sounded, just as Auntie Geraldine had predicted, Willow rushed to tell her that she’d heard from Tom and Martha was okay.

‘Thank goodness for that,’ Mum said. ‘Were there others in the lift with her?’

Willow told her mother all that she knew and then asked about her old friend being at Anchor House. ‘Has she really left Uncle Brian?’

‘It would appear so.’

‘But why after all these years and when they’ve always seemed okay together as a couple?’

‘She wants more than “okay”. She wants excitement. More specifically, she wants what I have with Ellis.’

Willow thought about this for a moment. ‘What about what you had with Dad?’ she then asked.

There was a silence down the line. ‘I suppose that was different,’ her mother said eventually.

‘Can I ask you something personal, Mum?’

‘Yes.’

‘If Ellis had moved in next door while Dad was still alive, would you have … would you have been attracted to him? Would he have been a temptation?’

‘Heavens, what a question! What makes you ask such a thing?’

‘It was something Auntie Geraldine said. She referred to Ellis as your Lover-Boy and something to do with him being water under the bridge. Was he more than just an old friend when you were students together?’ Willow was thinking of Martha and how adamant she had been earlier in the year, and when they were first getting to know Ellis, that he and Mum weren’t telling the full story about how well they used to know each other.

‘As students we were just friends,’ her mother said in answer to her question, ‘it was … later, a few years later, that he came to mean more to me.’

‘Did you regret not marrying him, then? Was he what you might call a lost opportunity?’

‘Willow, are you asking me these questions because you’re worried you’ve made a choice you regret, or think you might come to regret?’

Taken aback by her mother’s question, how intuitive it was, she tried to think how best to answer it. She badly wanted to be honest, to tell the truth and admit that she had got everything wrong and it was all her fault, just as it always was. But she was terrified that if she did say the words out loud, everything would come tumbling down around her and then what?

‘It’s perfectly natural to have doubts about all sorts of things when you’re pregnant,’ Mum said, saving her from having to respond.

‘Yes,’ Willow said quietly, ‘you’re probably right.’

‘But on the other hand, it doesn’t do to dwell on things when you’re pregnant. Would you like me to come and see you?’

‘What about Auntie Geraldine?’