‘Just unzipping your trousers.’

‘Liza.’

‘Mm?’

‘I love you.’

Liza looked away, unable to speak. All these years and it had happened at last. She’d heard these words so many times before, but this was the first time she’d actually wanted to hear them. Until now, they’d always made her feel sick.

‘It’s almost killed me, waiting this long,’ Kit went on. ‘I want to make love to you more than anything in the world.’

Liza quivered helplessly. She knew it was corny, but a tingling sensation actually was going down her spine.

She cleared her throat and nodded. ‘Me too.’

‘But if it’s going to change things between us ... if it’s going to spoil all this ...’

‘I don’t think it is,’ said Liza, who had wondered the same thing herself. This time she shook her head, desperate to convince him she was right. ‘I really don’t think it is.’

‘Tell you what.’

‘What?’

Slowly, he slid the straps of her white nightdress off her shoulders.

‘You don’t get bored with me,’ whispered Kit, his breath warm against her neck, ‘I won’t get bored with you.’

He was so in control. Liza wondered how on earth a twenty-three-year-old could be so self-assured. Heavens, he acted older than she did.

‘Is that a promise?’ she said, dry-mouthed. The need to know was overwhelming.

As he carried her through to the bedroom, Kit said, ‘Cross my heart, hope to die.’

* * *

It wasn’t a let-down.

Thank God.

Not that Liza had seriously expected him to be lousy in bed; it was just when you built something up so much in your mind, your expectations soared so sky-high they became almost impossible to live up to.

Anyway, thought Liza, smiling with her eyes closed, it hadn’t been a let-down in any shape or form.

And she definitely hadn’t been bored.

‘By the way, my cousin wants to meet you,’ said Kit, much later that morning.

Liza was admiring his brown legs. Better legs, possibly, than any she had ever seen on a man.

‘Which cousin?’

‘Nicky.’

‘You mean from the Songbird?’

Kit mimicked her look of horror.

‘Yes, from the Songbird.’

‘Oh my God, does she want to kill me?’

‘Don’t panic, business is on the up. The restaurant isn’t going to close after all.’

Liza covered her face with the duvet. Her voice was muffled. ‘She must hate me.’

‘Actually, she agrees with you. As soon as I said you’d eaten there on New Year’s Day, it clicked. That was the day her chef turned up half-cut, apparently, and Nicky had to do most of the cooking herself.’

‘Poor thing.’

‘She’s okay. You’ll get on fine,’ said Kit.

Liza rested her head in the crook of his shoulder.

‘This is proper boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. Meeting the family.’ She smiled at the thought. This was something else she’d shied away from over the years, simply because there hadn’t seemed much point. ‘Whatever next?’

‘May as well mention it while we’re on the subject,’ Kitsaid evenly. ‘My father. This thing is, he

—’

‘Your father wants to meet me too? My God, talk about popular! How does—’

Kit put his hand gently over Liza’s mouth to shut her up.

‘Don’t jump to conclusions. I was about to say don’t expect anything like that from my father, because he absolutely doesn’t want to meet you.’

‘Oh.’

‘No offence.’

‘I’m not offended,’ said Liza, deeply offended.

‘Look, he’s pretty old-fashioned. Upsetting Nicky didn’t do you the world of good, for a start.’

‘Right.’ Liza nodded against his chest. She could understand that.

‘Well, so basically, he wasn’t thrilled when I told him I was seeing you.’ Kit paused and drew breath. ‘Then, when he found out how old you were ...’

Liza winced.

‘Don’t tell me. It was scrape-him-off-the-ceiling time.’

‘Like I said, he’s old-fashioned. He has these set ideas. Set in concrete,’ Kit amended wearily.

‘You know the kind of thing. My sister’s thirty so she should be married and having babies. I’m twenty-three so I should be playing the field.’

‘How does he know you aren’t?’

‘He wants me to play the field with nineteen-year-old girls. Twenty-year-olds. I said I wasn’t interested.’

‘Heavens, maybe he thinks you’re gay.’

‘Worse still,’ Kit looked down at her, ‘I told him I wasn’t playing the field. I told him this thing with you was serious. And, God knows, that’s a first for me.’

Liza’s stomach did a slow, snake-like somersault. Not normally superstitious, she was nevertheless terrified of tempting fate.

‘Isn’t that jumping the gun a bit?’

Kit shrugged.

‘Maybe, but I meant it.’

Oh please, please, thought Liza, squirming with pleasure as his hand trailed down her stomach, don’t ever get bored with me.

Everyone else always seemed to sneer at it, but Dulcie adored daytime TV. She loved the pointlessness of it all ... the viewers’ makeovers, the snippets of movie gossip, the panel of experts deciding which baked beans were the least disgusting. She also enjoyed the effortless jolly banter between her favourite presenters, the how-to-transform-a-box-room-into-a banqueting-hall items, and the cookery slots, which Dulcie found quite soothing to watch.

Best of all though, she liked Nancy, the five-times-married resident problem-solver, who was wonderfully motherly and quite unshockable. If anyone said anything shameful or embarrassing she immediately told them in her lovely soothing voice that she understood completely because that had once happened to her too.

‘Believe me, I know how you feel,’ Nancy was saying now to a tearful woman who had just discovered her husband had a bit of a predilection for lacy underwear. ‘Tell me, is it just the undies or does he wear frocks too?’

He did, he did, confessed the woman, between sobs. She’d found a flouncy yellow chiffon dress in the back of the wardrobe and wondered what on earth it was doing there. It was horrible, not her taste in clothes at all.

While Dulcie bit the chocolate off a jaffa cake, Nancy suggested to the woman that shopping together for clothes might bring her and her husband closer, and could also help to avoid costly mistakes.

The next caller was more up Dulcie’s street.

‘... the thing is,’ pleaded Greta from Scarborough, ‘I really love him, Nancy. If he left me I don’t know what I’d do, I just need someone to tell me how I can keep him ... I’ll do anything ...’

Dulcie ate another jaffa cake. She knew that feeling all right.

‘Right, Greta. I understand completely how desperate you must be feeling,’ said Nancy cosily. ‘I can hear it in your voice. But first of all I have to tell you what you mustn ‘t do.’

‘What mustn’t she do, Nancy?’ enquired one of the show’s presenters.

‘Yes, Nancy,’ said Dulcie, ‘what mustn’t we do?’

‘Please, please don’t be tempted into thinking all your problems would be solved if you had a baby.’ Nancy sounded sorrowful. ‘Because believe me, Greta, that would be the biggest mistake you could make.’

The jaffa cake was melting. Dulcie licked chocolate off her fingers and conjured up a mental picture of a tiny baby, the image of Liam, wearing tennis whites and waving a miniature racquet.

This was a possibility that hadn’t so much as crossed her mind.

‘It’s crossed my mind,’ admitted Greta from Scarborough. ‘Don’t let it,’ Nancy said firmly.

This was like being told not to think of pink elephants. Dulcie promptly imagined Liam showing off his new son, driving him around in the Lamborghini, proudly telling everyone how fatherhood had changed his whole life .. .

‘I know,’ said Greta, beginning to sound a bit desperate, ‘but it worked for my sister. She got pregnant and her bloke stuck by her. And she did it on purpose,’ she added defiantly. ‘He thought she was still on the pill but she stopped taking it.’

‘Deceit and trickery,’ Nancy looked sad and shook her head, ‘deceit and trickery. Trust me, pet, this isn’t the answer. Getting pregnant – when all you’re trying to do is hang on to a man – is a recipe for disaster. You’re just grasping at straws.’

Dulcie lifted up her white sweatshirt and gazed down at her flat stomach. Then she shoved the biscuit tin under the sweatshirt and surveyed the odd-shaped lump. Nancy had got rid of Greta now. She had moved on to John from Norwich who was forty-four but his mother had never let him have a girlfriend.

Dulcie knew from the tone of Greta’s voice that she would go ahead and do it anyway. You could always tell when people were going to ignore Nancy’s sound advice.

Dulcie pulled the biscuit tin out from under her sweatshirt, opened it and thoughtfully bit into a bourbon. There was no doubt about it, getting pregnant accidentally-on-purpose might not do the trick — but then again, what if it did? It could be a risk worth taking.

What a shame there wasn’t a Predictor pregnancy kit for men, a just-pee-on-this type of thing that would reliably inform you whether the prospective father of your child might actually be quite keen on the idea.

Or, on the other hand, if he was a fully paid-up member of the run-a-mile club.

Minutes later, it came to her.

Brilliant, thought Dulcie excitedly, amazed that a solution so perfect and simple hadn’t occurred to her before. Or, indeed, to Nancy.

Who needed a pre-pregnancy test? All she had to do was bend the truth a bit.

It wasn’t even fibbing, it was ... well, it was research.

Chapter 28

‘You’re what?’ said Liza, horrified, when Dulcie announced her momentous news the next day out in the back garden. ‘You’re kidding!’

‘I found out last week. Isn’t it terrific?’