The Tube train shuddered and groaned as it pulled out of the station. Kirsty had managed to grab the last seat in the carriage, beating a man with a combover to it by a whisker. Now he stood over her, hanging on to the overhead rail, the tssk-tssk-tssk that emanated from his headphones worming its way into her head. All around her people wore frowns, staring into their own personal spaces, wishing the journey away. A woman at one end of the carriage was eating a Big Mac, the gherkin and meat stink filling the train. There was a man with an acoustic guitar at the other end of the carriage, and Kirsty was worried that he would start playing at any moment, bashing out some tuneless rendition of a Beatles standard before lurching along the carriage with his hand out, demanding his reward.

God, she hated the Tube. If the man with the guitar did turn out to be a busker he wouldn’t get anything out of her. She had already given away the last of her spare change to a woman sitting outside the station. Kirsty passed dozens of homeless people every day, and simply couldn’t afford to hand money over very often, but this woman (this girl – she couldn’t have been older than sixteen) had been holding a baby. The sight had chilled Kirsty, and she had reached into her bag and taken out her purse, emptying the coins into her palm and handing them to the girl. This certainly wasn’t the first homeless girl with a baby she had come across, but it was the first since she had found out.

She rested her hands on her stomach, feeling the need to be protective, wishing she wasn’t down here, in the unnatural heat, God-knows-how-many diseases drifting around. She should have got the bus, or taken a taxi. But there had been a part of her that had wanted to play the martyr, so that when she got home she could say to Jamie, ‘I had to go on the Tube because of you.’

She wondered how he would react when she told him – not that she had been on the Tube, but that she was pregnant. OK, she didn’t know for certain. She hadn’t taken a test yet. But her period was four days late, which was unheard of for her, Miss Regular As Clockwork. And she had known anyway. She had felt it at the moment of conception, and she had a feeling Jamie had known too. She was sure he would be delighted – she knew he really wanted children – but was this the right time?

Yes. Yes it was. Despite everything that had been going on. Or maybe even because of it.