A/N: well, I decided which way this is going... let me know what you think. It's just what I find myself wanting to write about, so I thought that was the best choice. Thank you for reading, you lovely people.

That evening, as she stood in the half-light of her bathroom, staring at three plastic sticks lined up on the windowsill, Laura Hobson fully understood the term 'blind panic'.

Her heart was clattering wildly against her ribcage and black spots began to appear in the periphery of her vision. She sat down unsteadily on the edge of her bath, placing two clammy palms on the cool porcelain. She was shaking.

She closed her eyes as a maelstrom of hot, frenzied emotions flurried through her, laced with the sickening cool of disbelief.

Oh God.

She'd done three tests and they all showed the same improbable result.

How could we have been so stupid?

After five days of 'food-poisoning', Laura had become suspicious. Something within her had spoken of an unnerving possibility and, if she was honest, she had predicted the formation of these little pink lines long before she'd made it to the privacy of her own home after work. For the past few days, she had been trying to ignore the unusual tenderness in parts of her body, as well as the relentless fatigue. The previous night she had burst into tears over a sofa advert on the television. Together with the sickness, it all pointed towards something that you didn't have be a doctor to figure out.

Yet, one would have thought that a doctor, a 40-year-old one at that, would have more sense than to find herself in this predicament. One night stands between middle-aged people were not supposed to end this way. For goodness' sake, she had friends who had been trying for children for years and here she was in the aftermath of a single, silly accident. She cast her mind back to the hazy memories of that now evermore fateful evening, and scrabbled in her thoughts for any recollection of her thought process in terms of protection. The night's events had been unexpected – that was for certain. Of course, he had not been prepared, and, having not exactly experienced a string of successful romances over the past few years, neither was she. Oddly… or perhaps completely predictably… they had not even mentioned the subject. The drunken, lustful abandon had wholly consumed them – she remembered that at least – and now the Gods of remote possibility were making her pay.

You stupid, stupid idiot.

She gripped the sides of the bathtub, her fingernails turning white with the force of her anger. Hot tears of frustrated embarrassment pricked at the back of her eyes and she groaned at the enormity of her own folly. Her life was potentially altered irrevocably as a result of one almighty mistake. What would happen to her? To her career? What would everyone say? Her friends? Her colleagues? How they would judge her!

Of course, her thought process, albeit unwieldy, was nonetheless skillfully ignoring the loudest alarm bell of all. She was deliberately avoiding addressing the most urgent and catastrophic concern, preferring instead to unpick the tangle of her own reaction first. Somehow, she felt that thinking of him right at this moment would send her over the edge. But... how could she not think of him? Dark tendrils of terror slid up her back, gripping her insides, sending a familiar wave of nausea high into her throat. How was she going to manage this? Could she manage this? Was it the right thing to do – bringing a child into the world in such circumstances? Was she capable of making the necessary sacrifices? Could she… do it alone?

Robbie.

Try as she might to ignore it, his name was a pulsating persistence in her subconscious. She could almost taste the bitterness of regret as she contrasted what, in other circumstances, would have been a future fairytale ending to her daydreams, but was now a seething snake pit of complication. To be expecting his child should have been the most intensely happy turn of events she could ever have imagined… but by some sick twist of fate, she found herself terrified by it. Terrified of his reaction – he'd told her he was unready even for a gentle relationship. How would he react to this? He'd be angry, no doubt, and just as confused as she was. Then he'd be forced to do the right thing – the only way her beloved, reliable Robbie knew how – and stick by her. It would be a relationship built on unstable foundations of duty and propriety; a breeding ground for resentment and contempt.

The anger distilled painfully down into sadness, and searing, salty tears spilled down her cheeks. A waterlogged sob rose in her throat as she pictured how his face would change when she told him, accompanied by another, louder blub as she imagined how irrevocably everything would alter between them. After all this time of looking out for him, she was going to turn his world upside down. In an instant.

I'm sorry, Robbie.

What was she going to do? What were they going to do? Was there even going to be a 'them' to consider? The one rational thought that she could muster was that she needed to have all of this straight in her head before she even considered telling him. She needed to decide how she felt and whether she felt capable of taking this forward. She needed a plan, so that he didn't feel in any way obligated… or trapped...

Laura took a long, deep breath. She dried her eyes, summoning the strength that had kept her going in countless grizzly crises at work, and the practicality that drove her on when emotions ran high. Hurriedly, she gathered up the pregnancy tests lined up on the windowsill and sealed them in a makeup bag, tucked safely at the back of the bathroom cabinet. Out of sight, out of mind? Unlikely. She splashed cool water on her face and breathed deeply, letting the breath penetrate the tight furl of anxiety in her stomach. She straightened the bathroom, as if to banish evidence of what had happened, and, reassured by the routine, proceeded to tidy the rest of the upstairs.

As she stepped into her bedroom to gather several shirts for the wash, she caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror. Her face was still red from crying and she looked abominably tired, but her eyes were drawn lower… down to her middle. Involuntarily, she placed a cautious hand over her abdomen. For the first time in five long days, she permitted a quiet emotion to emerge to the surface; to be heard through the cacophony of remonstration and regret:

Awe.

She looked down at her hand resting on her stomach and for a millisecond the raging tumult within her subsided. She took in a shallow, tingly breath and an entirely different sensation skittered upwards in her chest. She couldn't put her finger on it, but it felt like a strange mix between how she felt when Robbie smiled at her and a somewhat deeper ache of longing. She caught the corner of her lower lip between her teeth as an effervescent flare of pure wonder made her gasp slightly, grappling with the icy disbelief of a few moments ago. Was this really happening? Was she really facing the prospect of something of which she had long since given up hope?

Might there one day soon be a little someone who calls me mummy?