From Heartache To Forever. Caroline Anderson

      ‘No, you’re fine, go and sit down, I’ll bring it through.’

      So while she put the kettle on he wandered into the sitting room and closed the curtains, then sat down to wait for her, his eyes seeking out the little silver box as they always did, his heart heavy.

      If they’d known before that weekend what was to follow, none of this would have happened, but of course they hadn’t. They’d spent the next two months together in blissful ignorance, and then in late January MFA had sent him on his first posting.

      No strings, he’d said, so he’d had no contact with her, which had been fine because he’d been too busy to think about anything else, but then he’d come back on leave in early May, and he’d discovered she was pregnant.

      It was his worst nightmare, the last thing he’d ever wanted to hear, and his first instinct was anger because he thought she’d done it on purpose, but then she told him their baby girl had such hugely complex congenital heart defects that she was unlikely to make it to term, and his world fell apart.