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while, Evelyn found she was able to smile properly for the first time since she’d heard the news.

Chapter 5
    Belinda
    A week or so after the funeral, Belinda remembered to wonder where her period was.
    This can’t be right . . . she was looking over her calendar in confusion when it started to dawn on her. She had spent the last couple of weeks feeling nauseous on and off. She had been tired and cranky and, well, obviously emotional. But she had taken all of these symptoms as normal for a grieving bride-to-be who was actually no longer going to be .
    The first thing she did was pick up her mobile to call Andy about it. When she saw the words ‘Andy – work’ up on the screen and realised what she was doing, she felt so angry at her own heartbreaking mistake that she threw the phone across the room. Unfortunately, she was in her bedroom, where the majority of the room was taken up by their king-sized bed. Her mobile landed quite safely after bouncing off the pillows piled high against the headboard, meaning the moment rather lacked the required drama of having something smash to smithereens against a wall.
    Okay, pull yourself together. Let’s work through this logically.
    First of all, she was on the pill – and had been for about three years. And secondly . . . secondly . . . my fiancé is dead. I can’t be pregnant, I absolutely cannot be about to go through this on my own.
    Thirty minutes later she had returned from the chemist and was standing in the bathroom, staring down at the home pregnancy kit. She considered phoning Stacey or maybe one of her uni friends, someone like Jules, perhaps, who would be more relaxed and easy-going about it all, but decided she wasn’t yet ready to involve anyone else in this. If the test were positive, having someone know about it would make it all seem too real.
    She took the test and then sat on the edge of the bathtub to wait for the results. While she waited she pored over her calendar, trying to convince herself that this couldn’t be right. How could she not have realised that she hadn’t had her period for nine whole weeks . That put her at four to five weeks late. As she looked back through the months, she saw ‘Jenny’s hen’s night’ written in bright pink pen on the 5th of August. That was the night she had got drunk on homemade sangria. Really drunk. Messy drunk. She’d thrown up in the early hours of the morning shortly after getting home – after going to bed and taking the pill as part of her normal bedtime ritual. Did that mean she’d thrown up the pill along with all of that nasty sangria?
    Oh God, maybe this really is happening.
    Sixty seconds to go. She accidentally let herself lapse into a daydream, imagining what this moment would be like if Andy were alive. As much as she wasn’t ready to be a mother, it still would have had a completely different feel to it. There would have been nervous excitement. There would have been a hand to hold as they waited. A leg next to her leg here on the edge of thetub that she could anxiously press her thigh against. They’d have made little jokes and worried about what their parents would have thought – but, ultimately, they would know they had each other and if they’d brought the wedding forward, they could have been married before she’d even started to show. They could have worked things out. Andy had always said he wanted to have lots of kids. He probably would have been perfectly fine with it all . . . No doubt his enthusiasm would have rubbed off on her. If the result were positive, maybe he would have let out a whoop of delight and pulled her up from the edge of the bathtub and then danced her across the room, his tanned, brown arms tight around her waist.
    She could feel tears welling up and shook herself back out of the daydream. It was time to check the results.
    Two lines. One slightly more faded than the