I went to the kitchen and got out a bottle of wine. I opened it and poured a large glass. I listened through the monitor as they talked and he read her a story.

I loved him. I loved our life. I didn’t want to be with anyone else. It was him I wanted to come home to. It was him I wanted to grow old with. We had our problems. But then everyone did. It couldn’t always be all flowers and rainbows and mini-breaks and over-the-top declarations of love. We were a team. We were married. Wed. Together. And that’s the way it needed to stay.

Will came downstairs and took a seat at the kitchen table.

‘I need to talk to you.’ I smiled at him and handed him the glass of wine.

‘I do too.’

He reached behind his back.

And placed my gun down on the kitchen table.

‘Just who the hell are you?’

Everything was spinning.

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.

I dropped down into the chair opposite him.

‘I . . . I’m your wife. Mother of your child.’ I took the long, thin object out of my pocket and placed it on the table next to the gun. ‘Mother of your children.’

The two of us sat there staring at the gun.

And the positive pregnancy test.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

I think all acknowledgements should be written a little bit drunk. It allows you to really gush in proper Oscars acceptance speech style.

So whoooop here goes . . .

*Me standing on stage, clasping a copy of this book, looking out at a packed applauding audience.*

A huge thank you to my editors of dreams, Katherine Armstrong and Eleanor Dryden, for loving Lex from the very start and for only ever giving me edit notes which had me nodding in agreement. You guys get me. So thank you!! And to all the very talented people at Zaffre for their hard work in bringing The Nursery into the world.

Alice Lutyens, my Superagent. A big sparkly thank you for the hand-holding and endless good advice.

I continue to be forever grateful to Tom Bromley and Faber Academy for giving me the guidance and start that helped me get published.

To my BESTIE FOREVER Rebecca Thornton. *Camera pans to beautiful, dark-haired woman, who can’t be more than thirty-two, and is the only person in the audience standing and still clapping manically.* I don’t think I could write at all without you to ask advice from and have therapeutic EAC chats with. Let’s keep doing this together, as together there is NOTHING we can’t do *dramatic air punch* . . . (except drive and cook).

To Caroline Barrow, Lara Smith-Bosanquet and Georgia Tennant. THANK YOU *hands clasped to chest* for the endless support and reading and rereading and basically being wonder women and wonderful friends.