‘I’m not sure I can,’ she said in the dark when they were both lying down, their faces almost touching. ‘Not with worrying about Mum and—’

Hearing the unhappiness in her voice, he hushed her with a kiss. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said, wanting desperately to give her the one thing he knew she so badly wanted. If he could do that, then maybe it would take her mind off worrying about her mother having a boyfriend. She might even learn to be pleased for her.

It was almost midnight and with Rick fast asleep in bed, Willow had locked herself in the bathroom.

She was in a state of shock, unable to believe what she was seeing. There had to be a mistake. This couldn’t be happening. It really couldn’t. The kit had to be faulty. Or more likely, she had done something wrong.

But even as she tried to convince herself that she couldn’t be pregnant, she pieced together her suspicions and the reasons she had bought the kit in the first place – two missed periods and a definite urge to throw up in the last few days.

Only a few days ago her biggest worry was breaking the awful news to Simon and Lucy that Cedric was missing. Now this!

But how? How could it have happened? She was never careless about these things. Never! And what on earth would Rick say if he knew? More worryingly, what about her sister, what would Martha say if she guessed?

It had been bad enough earlier this evening when Martha had been sounding off at her on the phone because Willow couldn’t make it down to see Mum at the weekend as that was when she was moving in with Rick. But if Martha knew that Willow had been careless enough to get pregnant when she and Tom had been trying all these months to conceive, she would be doubly annoyed with her. Not just annoyed, but upset. Very upset.

Which meant there was nothing else for it, Willow had to keep her pregnancy a secret. It would give her time to think. But what was there to think about? She couldn’t keep the baby, could she? No way could she take care of a child when she was so useless at behaving like a responsible adult. A responsible adult who had proper savings and a pension plan and ISAs fully topped up. All she had, apart from the trust Dad had left her, was a bank account that fluctuated between black and red as easily as the wind changed direction.

Nobody in their right mind would trust her to raise a child.

But she wasn’t alone, was she? She had Rick. Unlike her previous boyfriends, Rick was decent and dependable, and he couldn’t do enough to show her how much he cared for her. What was it he’d said about having children? She thought back to the conversation they’d had.