At night, Connie lay in bed imagining the house wrapping her inside its walls. During the day, she kept busy, cleaning the flat, washing and ironing, trying new recipes for her father. She finished cleaning Victor’s rooms and took her payment, but of course it was nowhere near enough to buy a ticket to Paris. She hid the money with her mother’s wedding ring beneath the floorboard in her room, away from temptation. She would find the rest, but first she needed Johnny’s address. Each day she checked the post box and each day her stomach churned with disappointment.

To distract herself, she gathered together a bundle of postcards – some she had bought with Johnny at the National Gallery and some her father had sent her on his quests for rare books. He had travelled to Oxford, Durham, Harrogate. Once he had gone as far as Edinburgh. She made a display of the postcards in the shop, pinning them on the wall by the door.

One day, she pulled on her polka dot dress and struggled to do up the zip. Dragging it off, she threw it on the bed and then sat down in her underwear, touching her belly. The change was slight but undeniable. She groaned and leaned forward with her head in her hands. Her predicament was becoming visible. People would notice and what would they say? She thought of Harry’s mother, and imagined her pointing a finger and muttering words like tart and whore and girls like you. No one would understand.

She took an old sheet from the cupboard, cut it into strips and wound them around her body. Slipping on a different dress, she smoothed the material at the front and thought that it would do. She would wear some of her mother’s larger dresses if she needed to, and avoid seeing people as much as she could, especially Harry who knew her well and might catch her out.

The weeks passed and she kept on binding her belly, only letting herself free at night. The fluttering inside grew stronger. One time, standing at the side of the road waiting to cross, she felt a movement so pronounced that she cried out and passers-by looked at her in alarm.

She wasn’t sure what was worse: the fear of discovery or the waiting. She had to do something. So, she wrote Johnny a letter. Perhaps once she had his address, she could send it to him and he would get used to the idea of the baby before Connie arrived on his doorstep.