Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Epilogue
- Author’s note
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
It was only when Anna was sick for the third morning running that the shadow that had been lurking at the back of her mind began to coalesce into a full-on phantom. She stared at the calendar hanging on the wall beside the door of the Fishergirl’s Luck, counting days, but that made things worse, not better. Her periods had always been erratic, arriving early, or late, or sometimes not at all. It had caused her endless mental agonies as a teenager. The gap her mother’s death had made in her life had always been present, but that was the point that it became impossible to ignore. Her dad had tried, bless him, but the idea of talking to him about such things had filled Anna with complete dismay. At sixteen, she still hadn’t bled, and secretly thought that there was something terribly wrong with her. Then, one day, there it was, following the faintest of pangs – a pale stain when she got up in the morning that worsened only slightly throughout the day. The next day it had gone again. She’d religiously written down the date and then looked out for it the next month, but there was nothing. It took another three months for her to bleed again, and even then it was the same why-bother event.
It was only when she’d been hustled to the doctor by one of her mother’s old friends that her mind was finally set at rest. She’d started seeing a boy called Nick who was in the sixth form at school, which had sent her dad into such paroxysms of panic that he’d drafted in ‘Aunt Violet’ to talk to Anna about it. Violet had given her three pieces of advice.
‘Always, always use a condom; never, ever let him talk you into doing anything you’re not sure you want to do; and go on the pill.’
That had led her to a consultation with her doctor in which the full extent of Anna’s worries had come tumbling out. Doctor Jeffries, who had been a constant all her life, had listened carefully, nodding her neatly coiffed grey head every now and then.
‘You’ve been worried about this for a long time, haven’t you?’ she’d asked, once Anna had finished. ‘Your mother had the same issue, you know. In fact, her cycle was so uneven that she was two months pregnant before she even realized you were on the way.’