He stared at the stick and saw the line for himself.

‘But I want to do a second test,’ she said, before he could say anything. ‘Just to be sure.’

He knew there was no point in talking her out of it. Not when he could see that she had a second kit already lined up. But deep down, he also wanted as much evidence as Martha did to prove that the first test hadn’t given a false reading. That would be just too cruel. He said nothing of this, merely left Martha alone to follow the instructions and then came back into the bathroom when she said he could.

Holding hands, they waited together. It felt like a very long time since he had felt this emotionally close to Martha, as though finally she had lowered the barriers that each month of disappointment had erected between them.

‘Do you suppose it’s all that running you’ve been doing,’ he said, ‘it’s relaxed your body?’

She shook her head. ‘No, silly. We must have conceived well before I started running again.’

He smiled and checked his watch. ‘Another fifty seconds,’ he said. ‘Oh, and I forgot to say, in all the excitement, your mother tried ringing you.’ He pulled out Martha’s mobile from his pocket and gave it to her.

‘I’ll call her later,’ she said, barely looking at it. ‘How long now?’

‘Thirty-five seconds.’

‘Will you tell her our news?’ he asked, when a few more second had passed. ‘Or should we wait?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think we should wait.’

‘For what? To be sure?’

‘No,’ he said, already feeling protective of the life they had created together, ‘until we’re beyond the risk of—’

‘Don’t say it,’ she interrupted him. ‘Please don’t say anything to spoil this moment.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. Then: ‘Time’s up,’ he said.

Together, his arm around her shoulders now, they looked at the slender white stick and just as the first one had given a positive result, so did this one.

‘We did it, Tom,’ Martha said, her face wreathed in the brightest of happy smiles. ‘We did it.’

‘I knew we would,’ he lied.

Chapter Twenty-Six

‘You did what?’

‘I just said. I went for a drink with a group from work after my shift; it was Stefan’s birthday today.’

Rick slammed a drawer shut. They were in the kitchen and he was emptying the dishwasher, a job she should have done before setting off for work, but which she had forgotten all about. ‘I don’t care whose birthday it is,’ he said, ‘what did you drink?’

‘I had just the one glass of wine,’ she lied. ‘One won’t hurt the baby.’ Would two?

‘One might be all it takes,’ he snapped. ‘Is that what you want? For our child to be damaged? To be mentally impaired or deformed because you,’ he swung round and jabbed the air with an accusatory finger just inches from her face, ‘had just the one glass of wine?’