PROLOGUE

      AT SIX A.M. on a Thursday, Lighthouse Bay’s maternity ward held its breath. Midwife Catrina Thomas leaned forward and rubbed the newborn firmly with a warmed towel. The limp infant flexed and wriggled his purple limbs and finally took a gasping indignant lungful.

      The baby curled his hands into fists as his now tense body suffused with pink. ‘Yours now, Craig. Take him.’ She gestured to the nervous dad beside her and mimed what to do as she encouraged Craig’s big callused hands to gently lift the precious bundle. One huge splashing silver tear dropped to the sheet from his stubbled cheek as he placed his new son on his wife’s warm bare stomach.

      Craig released a strangled sob and his wife, leaning back on the bed in relief, half laughed in triumph, then closed her hands over her child and her husband’s hands and pulled both upwards to lie between her breasts.

      For Catrina, it was this moment. This snapshot in time she identified as her driver, the reason she felt she could be a midwife for ever—this and every other birth moment that had come before. It gave her piercing joy when she’d thought she’d lost all gladness, and it gave her bittersweet regret for the dreams she’d lost. But mostly, definitely, it gave her joy.

      An hour later Catrina hugged her boss awkwardly, because Ellie’s big pregnant belly bulged in the way as they came together, but no less enthusiastically because she would miss seeing her friend in the morning before she finished her shift. ‘I can’t believe it’s your last day.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Or my last night shift tomorrow.’

      ‘Neither can I.’ Ellie’s brilliant smile lit the room even more than the sunlight streaming in through the maternity ward windows.

      Trina marvelled at the pure happiness that radiated from a woman who had blossomed, and not just in belly size but in every way in just one year of marriage. Another reason Trina needed to change her life and move on. She wanted what Ellie had.

      A family and a life outside work. She would have the latter next week when she took on Ellie’s job as Midwifery Unit Manager for Ellie’s year of maternity leave.

      She’d have daylight hours to see the world and evenings to think about going out for dinner with the not infrequent men who had asked her. The excuse of night shift would be taken out of her grasp. Which was a good thing. She’d hidden for two years and the time to be brave had arrived.

      She stepped back from Ellie, picked up her bag and blew her a kiss. ‘Happy last day. I’ll see you at your lunch tomorrow.’ Then she lifted her chin and stepped out of the door into the cool morning.

      The tangy morning breeze promised a shower later, and pattering rain on the roof on a cool day made diving into bed in the daylight hours oh, so much more attractive than the usual sunny weather of Lighthouse Bay. Summer turning to autumn was her favourite time of year. Trina turned her face into the salty spray from the sea as she walked down towards the beach.

      She slept better if she walked before going up the hill to her croft cottage, even if just a quick dash along the breakwall path that ran at right angles