‘What are you making?’ she asked.

‘Mushroom risotto topped with a sprinkling of toasted walnuts and a drizzle of walnut oil. That okay with you?’

‘More than okay.’

‘Do you want a salad to go with it? Or what about some kale?’ Feeding her with good wholesome food was Tom’s way of preparing her body for creating and carrying a new human life. He regularly scoured the internet for the latest super-foods that would aid their ability to have a child. Cutting out alcohol should have been on the list of dos and don’ts, but they had both agreed a glass or two on alternate evenings would help them relax. Of course, the moment Martha became pregnant, she wouldn’t dream of touching alcohol. Or caffeine. Or soft cheese and whatever else was deemed harmful.

If there was one thing she was good at, it was abiding by rules. She was a stickler for rules. She was pretty good at making them too.

‘Thou shalt not break my ten commandments, so says Martha Miller.’

That was what her sister used to say when they were children and when Martha would invent a game for them to play. It would start simply enough, like pretending they were shipwrecked on a deserted island and had to make a camp before it was dark. It was all imaginary play; the island was the Turkish rug in the hall and the tent was an old sheet pegged over Mum’s clothes airer. But at some point, Willow would lose interest because Martha would keep devising things they could or could not do, like why Willow’s oversized cuddly polar bear couldn’t join them on the island.

‘We’re not on an island in the Antarctic,’ Martha would point out – helpfully in her opinion – ‘we’re marooned on a tropical island. Polar bears would find it too hot and they don’t eat coconuts, do they?’

‘They might if they were given the chance,’ Willow would say.

They had finished eating supper and were loading the dishwasher when Martha was seized with a depressingly familiar cramping sensation in her stomach. It was confirmation, as if she needed it, of what she already knew. It drew a defeated sigh from her, which she immediately tried to cover up by pretending to cough.

‘You all right?’ asked Tom.

‘A tickle in my throat,’ she said.

She rarely lied to Tom, and when she did it was usually a white lie to keep a surprise from him, like the time she had organised a secret weekend away in Venice for their first wedding anniversary. Just as she did with everything, she had planned it down to the last detail, other than factoring in that Tom had planned a surprise of his own.

‘That puts paid to the dinner reservation I’d made for us,’ he’d said with a laugh when she’d presented him with a card and their flight reservations.

But now she found that trying for a baby – what a ghastly phrase that was! – had turned her into a wife who regularly sneaked around behind her husband’s back.