Like our first kiss, the second started off incredibly tenderly and gently and as much as I knew it was wrong I couldn't help being swept away by it. By Martha. Much like when I'd initially felt her touching me I felt, for the first time in so long, like someone cared. This wasn't another Sam getting his rocks off by pushing me over a table and slamming deep inside me. This wasn't Michael and a perfunctory, him on top, screw to celebrate the weekly occurrence of Sunday morning, when, it's worth pointing out, I'd rather have been reading the papers. It was nuzzling and soft and…

… perfect.

I'd never kissed another woman before and I knew instantly that I liked it. It felt so right, and how could something so right possibly be wrong.

It only took, however, a matter of minutes for me to realise that such a stupid romantic notion really shouldn't be being applied in the given scenario. As the length of the kiss extended and the passion between us grew so did the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach that made me painfully aware of just how wrong the scenario was.

She was 18. She was Elliot and Gina's daughter. She was another woman, a girl. She'd just done her A levels. She was at an age where she still had world rocking celebrity crushes. She probably even had posters of Craig from Coronation Street on her bedroom wall.

There was no way in the world that this was acceptable, even if I didn't stop and take into account my status as a pregnant 39 year old heterosexual woman, which I didn't since the situation seemed dire enough without bringing all that to the table.

And yet still, I carried on not only responding to her kiss, but also playing my own part. Tangling my fingers in her hair, pulling her body tight against my own and letting my hands drift in directions that made me feel like some kind of paedophile.

It was only when she rolled me carefully underneath her that I forced myself to turn my head, jerking my lips away from hers and putting a hasty stop to the kissing.

She groaned, "Cons…" I felt her hand reach up and caress my neck, an action which hours before had seemed so innocent but took on a new twist in the face of everything that had happened.

"We can't." I spoke not to her, but to the back of the sofa, knowing that if I looked at her I was running the risk of things getting out of hand all over again, "It's wrong. You're too young."

"Oh. Right. So I'm old enough to lose my mother but not to make love to a beautiful woman." As quickly as I heard her words I pushed them determinedly from my mind, the concept of making loving to her one I wasn't at all ready to comprehend. "I told you before," she added, sounding like a sulky school girl on every level, "I've done this before."

I didn't want to hurt her but I knew I had to get across to her the seriousness of what she was suggesting. I took my hands and pushed her off of me before sitting up myself and finally, now we were in a less precarious position, looking at her.

"This is not getting pissed on a Friday night and snogging your mates to turn the boys on." It came out more harshly than I'd intended but all the same it was the point I'd been wanting to make. That said I softened my tone as I continued, "I really like you, and I appreciate what you were trying to do for me," As indeed I did – it's nice to think that someone wants to take care of you, "but we can't do this Martha."

She said nothing for a few moments, and I wondered if she was digesting and accepting everything I'd said, but then she turned on me and I realised she was even more stubborn than I'd first thought, and every inch her mothers daughter.

"Why do you think this is just about you? About you being alone, about you wanting comfort? Has it not occurred to you from this," she gestured round the room with her arm – to the dust, and the urn containing Gina's ashes that stood on the fireplace, "that I might want this too. That I might want to feel that you care about me too."

I sighed, "Martha, I do care."

She rolled her eyes, a display of truculent teen behaviour that only served to remind me how right I'd been to pull back, "But not enough to be intimate with me. Not enough to show me I'm loved." She looked at me, the once rolling eyes now full of tears, which I turned away to avoid seeing – although that didn't protect me from the words that followed,

"I was right about you. You are a hard faced cow."

Her words sunk into me like a knife – delivered in a tone as cold and as harsh as the content they hurt me every bit as much as any missive Sam had thrown at me that day, if not more so, and although I hated myself for getting angry with her I couldn't stop myself from snapping back.

"What the hell do you want me to do Martha? Do you really expect me to have sex with you on your father's sofa while he's asleep upstairs? Have you given any thought at all to what would happen if he woke up?"

"I don't care about that."

Her tone had changed again, no longer cold, but desperate and as I forced myself to look at her once more I found she was crying… no… sobbing, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them with her head resting on top.

"I don't care about anything Connie, I just want to be with you…"