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flustered and quick-tempered in a way which was out of character for her, and immediately they were on their own Rosie demanded anxiously, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
    When Chrissie sat down, her eyes filling with tears, Rosie stared at her.
    ‘Chrissie,’ she exclaimed reaching out towards her. ‘What is it?’
    ‘I’m pregnant,’ Chrissie told her tearfully. ‘I’ve only found out this morning. I thought it was just my age... I mean, I am forty...but I’ve been feeling so uncomfortable, so bloated and sick, that I decided I’d go and see Dr Farrar. When she asked me if I could possibly be pregnant, I laughed at first...
    ‘Oh, Rosie, what on earth are people going to say? Allison and Paul? I feel such a fool. A baby at my age... Would you believe it? Greg is thrilled... Isn’t that just like a man?’ she complained as she sniffed and blew her nose vigorously.
    ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she apologised. ‘It’s just been such a shock...’
    ‘You’re not that old,’ Rosie assured her automatically. ‘Lots of women have babies at your age, some of them for the first time, and as for Allison and Paul... You wait... I’m sure they’ll understand.’
    Chrissie pregnant... Chrissie having a baby... Although outwardly she knew she appeared calm, her words warm and soothing, inwardly her reaction was very, very different.
    She could not be jealous of Chrissie, she told herself later as she drove home, having congratulated her slightly shamefaced brother-in-law who, as Chrissie had said, was quite obviously thrilled at the idea of another child.
    Jealous of Chrissie... She could not be... She must not be. And yet, as she parked her car outside her own home, she acknowledged that she was.
    Not jealous in the way that one might be of someone else’s material possessions or even someone else’s apparently more fortunate lifestyle; no, this jealousy wasn’t like that—it went deeper, bit more sharply, hurt her in so many different ways that she almost felt as though she wanted to scream her pain and misery to the world.
    It wasn’t that she didn’t want Chrissie to have her baby. She shuddered at the thought. It was just... It was just that she... It was just that she what? Wanted a child of her own. A child she would have to bring up single-handedly. A child to whom she would one day have to explain and apologise for its lack of a father. Was that what she really wanted?
    She didn’t know what she wanted, she acknowledged later; all she did know was that the control she had always been so careful to exercise over herself and her deepest innermost feelings was dangerously close to splintering. That the pain she had thought she had buried so deep that it would never, ever surface was growing inside her, threatening to overwhelm her.
    She must not let it. She must not let anyone...anyone guess what she was feeling, especially Chrissie who, for all her strength, was right now feeling very vulnerable, and who needed her love and support.
    * * *
    I N THE MORNING she woke up heavy-eyed and on edge. Her sleep had been disturbed by confusing, unhappy dreams from which she had woken up with tears on her face.
    She must stop this, she told herself as she prepared to go and see her client. She had heard about, read about women who became obsessed with their need to fulfil their primary biological function and have a child. It filled and sometimes destroyed their whole lives, occupying them to such an extent there was no room left for other things, other relationships which might have offered them comfort and compensation.
    But, deep down inside her, Rosie knew that it wasn’t so much the desire to have a child that was causing her emotional anguish, but that somehow her feelings were all connected with the child she could have had but had lost. It was not just that she felt pain and on her own behalf; she felt it on that child’s as well. Pain and guilt, sorrow, anger almost, because her child had never been