Tilly Bagshawe 3-book Bundle: Scandalous, Fame, Friends and Rivals. Tilly Bagshawe

more prominent daily, Theresa seemed to have developed a layer of blubber round the middle that no amount of brisk walks into college would shift. As the nights grew shorter and the weather progressed from chilly to cold to arctic, she would sit curled up by the fire at the cottage, eating Marks & Spencer’s sticky toffee pudding and forcing herself not to think about either Horatio or Theo, whose arrival was now set for mid March, a mere three weeks before the actual elections. All the other candidates, including herself, had been diligently lobbying the college authorities for months, but not Theo. Of course not. He’ll just waltz in and steal it from under our noses, like the king that he is.

      ‘Ms O’Connor?’

      The doctor’s receptionist, a fat, surly jobsworth of a woman who revelled in the power she wielded over her tiny, linoleum-floored fiefdom, summoned Theresa imperiously to the desk.

      ‘You didn’t fill out your forms. I’m going to have to let this gentleman go in ahead of you. We’ll try and squeeze you in before five, if you’d like to do these now and bring them back to me.’

      ‘But my appointment was at three thirty!’ said Theresa wearily. ‘I’ve been waiting forty minutes already.’ She wouldn’t mind so much if she weren’t so damn exhausted all the time.

      The receptionist shrugged. ‘We need the forms. It’s part of our patients’ charter.’ She pointed to a laminated sheet on the wall.

      Theresa returned to her seat and began ticking boxes murderously. Patients’ charter indeed. I’d like to show her my ‘out of patience’ bloody charter. She’d been feeling low for weeks now, but had put off coming to see the doctor for fear he might advise rest (impossible with the election so close) or, even worse, a diet and exercise regime involving neither sticky toffee pudding nor sitting vegetable-like on the couch for three hours a night devouring old episodes of Location Location Location. By the time she’d finished the forms, provided a urine and blood sample, and exhausted the paltry supply of magazines – you know you’re bored when you’re reduced to skimming through a dog-eared copy of Cambridgeshire Today – the waiting room was all but empty when the doctor finally showed her into his office. A short, wisp of a man with the sort of pale, freckled complexion that looked even worse on men than it did on women, he nevertheless had a genial way about him, like a friendly leprechaun.

      ‘Ah, Ms O’Connor. Professor O’Connor, isn’t it?’ He smiled disarmingly. Theresa nodded. ‘Well, I must say, Professor, it is nice to end a long, dreary Wednesday on such a positive note.’

      ‘Positive?’ Theresa rubbed her eyes tiredly. ‘I’m not with you. You mean you don’t think there’s anything wrong with me?’

      ‘There isn’t anything wrong with you.’

      He was so definitive about it, Theresa found herself getting irritated.

      ‘What you mean is, you don’t know what’s wrong with me. Because I can assure you, I’m not in here for the fun of it. I don’t know what it is, if I’m anaemic or I’ve picked up some sort of virus. But my energy levels … what?’

      He was laughing at her now, his pale blue eyes creased at the corners, chuckling quietly to himself. ‘I’d stick to the literature if I were you, Professor. You make a lousy doctor.’

      Too annoyed to think of a comeback, Theresa folded her arms sullenly.

      ‘You’re pregnant, my dear.’

      Theresa went white. Without thinking, she grabbed the chair for support, sinking down slowly into it. It took a second or two to process what he’d just said. When eventually she spoke her voice sounded croaky and odd.

      ‘That’s not possible. I’m infertile. I tried for years … my ex … specialists.’ Her powers of sentence construction seemed to have deserted her. ‘There’s no way. I’m forty-four.’

      ‘Well, sorry,’ the doctor shrugged. ‘But you are pregnant. I can tell you that with one hundred per cent certainty. You’ll need to have a scan but I would guess you’re somewhere in the region of three months along. Does that ring any bells?’

      Yes. Christmas bells. Horatio’s loving, tortured face loomed into mental view. It was ridiculous, impossible. All those years of trying and hoping, of ovulation tests and IVF and sperm spinning and macrobiotic diets. And here she was, twelve years and one drunken one-night-stand later …

      ‘You must have missed at least one period.’

      ‘Probably,’ Theresa mumbled. ‘I’m so irregular anyway. I thought …’ She laughed nervously. ‘I thought it might be menopause.’

      ‘Again, I’d stick to the poetry. So I take it the pregnancy is … unexpected?’

      She nodded, stunned.

      ‘But, you’re planning to go through with it?’

      She looked up as if she’d been stung. ‘Go through with it? Yes. Of course.’