Contents

       Title Page

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Acknowledgements

      About the Author

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Chapter One

      The sound of Jackie’s laugh was a distant, muffled echo, and as I tried to focus on her face, the room began to spin. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my stomach, as though someone had stabbed me with the redhot blade of a knife, and I gasped.

      ‘Katie? Are you all right?’ Jackie’s voice came in waves, as though someone was placing a hand over the speaker on a radio and then lifting it away again. I tried to answer her, but it felt as though my tongue had swollen and was blocking off the back of my throat so that I could barely breathe. My whole body seemed heavy, and as I reached out my hand to try to steady myself on the reception desk, everything around me faded to blackness and I dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been abruptly cut.

      I don’t know how long I’d been lying on the floor before I opened my eyes and saw the blurred image of Jackie’s anxious face. She was leaning over me and her lips were moving, although all I could hear was the loud pulsing of blood in my head. I tried to sit up, but a firm hand on my shoulder pushed me gently down again, and then a voice that wasn’t Jackie’s said, ‘Don’t try to get up, Katie. You’ve had a nasty fall. Just lie still for a minute.’

      And that was when the hammer started pounding violently in my head, making me feel sick and disorientated, so that it was a relief to lie back and feel the solid floor beneath the rough, ribbed-cord carpet. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, the room had finally stopped revolving and I could see more clearly both Jackie’s face and that of another work colleague who was kneeling on the floor beside her.

      As my senses gradually began to return, I became aware of a warm dampness that seemed to be seeping through the back of my skirt. The last thing I could remember was standing talking to Jackie, who’d been telling me something funny that had made us both laugh, and I supposed I must have been holding a cup of coffee, which I’d spilt when, presumably, I’d fainted.

      Someone had placed a coat over me like a blanket, and I felt for the edge of it with my fingers and tried to say the word ‘coffee’. But the only sound I made was a hoarse, unintelligible whisper. I swallowed and tried again, and this time Jackie leaned forward and gently covered my hand with the coat as she said, ‘No, Katie. Don’t have coffee now. Wait just a little while, until you’re feeling better.’

      I tried to shake my head, but the movement made the hammer inside it pound more vigorously, and so, for a moment, I lay completely still, waiting for the wave of nausea that was washing over me to recede. Then, twisting my shoulders so that I could reach down towards the hem of my skirt, I touched the dampness on my leg. I must have banged my arm on the reception desk as I fell, because a sharp pain like an electric shock shot from my elbow to my wrist. Again, I lay completely still, waiting for the worst of the pain to pass before I pulled my hand out slowly from beneath the coat and raised it in front of my face.

      At first, I couldn’t identify the dark stain on my fingers. It wasn’t coffee, or even, as I’d been so afraid it might be, my own urine. And then I realised it was blood. A jolt of fear made my heart start to race and I felt a sense of total weariness. I rested my hand, palm upwards, on top of the coat that covered me and whispered Jackie’s name.

      ‘Yes, love,’ she said immediately, leaning over me again and smiling a small, reassuring smile. ‘I’m still here, Katie.’

      At that moment, someone must have noticed the blood on my fingers, because a hand slowly lifted the edge of the coat and I heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by a man’s voice saying, ‘Oh my God! There’s blood everywhere. It’s all over her legs. Where’s that sodding ambulance?’

      Someone shushed him, and then Jackie put her hand on my arm. ‘It’s all right, Katie,’ she said. ‘You probably cut yourself when you fell. I expect you caught your leg on the side of the desk. We’ve called an ambulance just to be on the safe side, so that they can check you over and make sure you haven’t broken anything. You’re okay, though. You’re going to be okay. Don’t worry.’

      But I could see clearly the worry in her eyes.

      She stroked the top of my arm distractedly as she added, ‘Someone’s gone to find Tom. He’ll be here any minute. You’ll be all right, Katie.’

      I wanted to tell her that they wouldn’t find my boyfriend Tom, because he was out doing a delivery. But it suddenly felt as though a weight was pressing down on top of me, forcing the last few ounces of energy out of my body. So, instead, I just closed my eyes and let the hot tears run out between my eyelashes.

      They didn’t make contact with Tom before the ambulance arrived, so I went to the hospital alone. And as I lay in the emergency department, staring up at a patch of flaking paint on the ceiling above my head, I tried not to be afraid.

      It sounded as though a dozen people were all talking at once, and then someone laid a long-fingered hand on my arm and said, in a slow, precise voice, ‘I’m sorry, Katherine. I’m afraid you may be losing the baby.’

      Finally, I had something to focus on. But although I could understand each of the individual words the doctor had spoken, I couldn’t make sense of what he’d actually said. I wiped my hand across my eyes, brushing away some of the tears that were wetting my hair and dampening the pillow under my head, and then I turned to look at the doctor.

      ‘What baby? There is no baby. I can’t …’ I sobbed a single, choking sob and whispered, ‘I was raped when I was 18. And I was … damaged. So I can’t have a baby.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’ The doctor touched my arm again and I wondered for a moment whether he meant that he was sorry because I’d been raped or because he’d made a mistake about the baby I couldn’t have. ‘You’re definitely pregnant, though,’ he said. ‘We need to take you up to the operating theatre to have a proper look.’

      I felt the small knot of panic that had been lying like a lump of lead in my stomach start to unravel, sending expanding threads of fear up through my chest until I could taste its sourness in my mouth. I pressed my face into the pillow and, for a moment, thought about giving in to the miserable weariness that was threatening to overwhelm me, and sleep. Instead, though, I turned to look at the doctor again, reached out to touch his white-coated sleeve and said, ‘Please try to save my baby.’

      When I woke up from the anaesthetic, Tom was sitting beside the bed, his hand covering mine, and as I looked up into his eyes, I knew immediately that there had