St Piran’s: Rescuing Pregnant Cinderella. Carol Marinelli

she lit six candles instead, the relaxing ones apparently, and lay there and waited for them to work, except they didn’t.

      She had to relax.

      It was important for the baby!

      Oh, and it would be so easy to cry now, but instead she sat up and pulled the plug out, and then she had another idea, or rather she decided to try out Diego’s idea.

      She’d fake it.

      Cramming the plug back in the hole, she topped up with hot water and feeling stupid, feeling beyond stupid, she lay back as the hot water poured over her toes and she sang the happiest song she could think of.

      A stupid happy song.

      And then another.

      Then she sang a love song, at the top of her voice at midnight, in her smart townhouse.

      And she was used to the neighbours banging on the walls during one of her and Henry’s fights, so it didn’t really faze her when they did just that. Instead she sang louder.

      Izzy just lay there in the bath, faking being happy, till her baby was kicking and she was grinning—and even if, for now, she had to fake it, thanks to a male nurse who wasn’t a frustrated doctor and certainly wasn’t the other cliché, by the time her fingers and toes were all shrivelled up, Izzy wasn’t actually sure if she was faking it.

      For a second there, if she didn’t analyse it too much, if she just said it as it was…

      Well, she could have almost passed as happy!