She jerked upright, groaning as her stomach performed twirls. If possible, she felt even worse than last night. Despite her best efforts, she’d tossed and turned for hours, the bed seeming more and more like a prison as the thought of pregnancy loomed larger in her mind. Finally, sometime around two, she’d decided to settle this whole thing by grabbing a pregnancy test at the chemist when she woke up. That settled, she’d drifted into a troubled sleep with dreams of screaming babies and piles of nappies—until the phone had jarred her awake. ‘Hello?’ she croaked, swinging her legs around to touch the floor and hoping solid ground would make her feel more settled. She squinted at the clock: 5:00 a.m. Who the hell would ring now? ‘Clare?’ Nicholas’s warm tone came through the line. ‘Sorry to call so early, but I figured you might be up?’ You figured wrong, Clare thought. She finally had the day off, and she’d planned to spend it celebrating not being pregnant after the negative test.
