I feel a tightening across my abdomen, then a sensation like I’ve wet myself a little bit. I get up and dash to the bathroom, my heart pounding, heat rising to my face in panic as I pull down my pyjama bottoms and sit on the loo. Oh, God, oh, God . . . I can’t breathe. A smear of red in my pyjamas. Blood. There shouldn’t be blood. ‘Tom!’ I cry.

I hear him thud up the stairs. He races into the bathroom. ‘What is it? What . . .’ he must see the shock and devastation on my face because he helps me gently off the loo. ‘Go and get dressed. We need to get to the hospital.’

I pull on an old pair of navy jogging bottoms I haven’t worn in years and a jumper that doesn’t match. Mum appears in my doorway, her face ashen. ‘Is it the baby?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ I cry, scraping my hair back into a scrunchie, my throat dry. ‘It’s still so early, Mum. I’m only eighteen weeks.’

She folds me into her arms as I cry, more like a whimper of fear, and I’m thankful, so thankful, that she’s here.

The journey to the hospital is a blur. Tom drives too fast, and Mum comforts me in the back. ‘Do you think I’m having a miscarriage?’ I say over and over.

‘I don’t know, honey, I don’t know.’ She smoothes my hair back from my face and I’m reminded of all the times she did that when I was a kid, when I woke from a nightmare, or when I was ill. And I remember Gran doing it too, when I stayed with her in the summer, how she’d let me climb into bed with her if I woke up scared in the night.

‘It’s not a lot of blood, more when I wipe, you know . . .’ I say, trying to remain hopeful.

‘Let’s wait and see what the doctors say.’