I was back in bed, sitting bolt upright and panicking, when Mrs Baxter came back with an egg and some bread and butter. She stood in the doorway.

‘Mibbie if you’re still poorly tomorrow we can ask Dr McTavish to see you,’ she said.

‘Oh, there is no need. I am feeling better,’ I declared. ‘I think a good bit of rest was all I was in want of.’

‘I am relieved to hear that, Mistress Dickson,’ she said. ‘I hate to see anyone abed, let alone a healthy girl like you. It reminds me of when I lost my babies. Four beautiful babies they were – all gone to be with the angels.’

I felt dreadfully sorry for her then and wondered if they had all died at once or one after the other, and if it had been a fever that swept the town or they had not survived the birth, like my own ma’s other bairns. But I didn’t ask. Will mine slip away too, wither in the womb? Would that not be for the best, for what could I offer a child? I had no real home, no husband and no family around me. Instead, I said I should be back at my kitchen duties in the morning.

‘Eat up your egg then, before it gets cold. You’ll need your strength,’ Mrs Baxter went on, bustling into the room and putting the tray by the bed. She paused then, appraising me in a funny way. Mibbie it was the shock on my face that I was trying to hide. But she said nothing, just bustled out again and went back to her pastry-rolling.

I spent the rest of the day panicking and racking my mind for a plan. I knew a pregnancy lasted nine months or so, if it was to come to term. That meant I would be having a babe in the autumn. And if I did not come to term, I would be having something else, for pregnancies failed and bairns died all the time. The ones who survived were the little miracles. Except that I did not feel this was a miracle at all.

It was a disaster.