‘Are you sure?’ Star was stunned, almost speechless, as she sat opposite the white-haired midwife in the treatment room at the Hartmouth doctor’s surgery.
‘I’ve delivered enough babies in my time to know you are around halfway through, missy. By my reckoning, your due date if you go the full forty weeks will be March the seventeenth.’
‘That’s my birthday too!’ Star exclaimed, with a flashback to her mother’s drunk lips relaying that even St Patrick couldn’t help her. Of course, 17 March was St Patrick’s Day as well as her own birthday! Estelle Bligh really was a white witch.
‘I thought I was just getting f-fat,’ she stuttered. ‘March, that’s so soon.’
Star thought back to her tryst in June and now everything made sense. With Conor and her only getting together in October, there was no way it could be his. The startling and undeniable fact that Steren Lilian Bligh had to face was that she was very much pregnant with Jack Murray’s baby.
Feeling suddenly faint, she made a funny little squeaking noise.
‘Are you OK, dear?’ The midwife reached for Star’s wrist and took her pulse.
Remembering her yogic breathing exercises from a few years back, Star managed to centre herself as the matter-of-fact woman in front of her continued.
‘Granted, you are a tiny thing, but your bump is still on the small side, so just to be safe I’m sending you straight to Penrigan General for a scan. You would have had one around now anyway. I have seen ladies like this before though, and then all of a sudden they balloon.’
‘So just to double-check, are you really and I mean really sure? Skye, that’s my daughter, was only five pounds when she was born.’
‘Steren, I am one hundred per cent certain. Have you felt Baby kicking at all?’
‘No.’ A sudden panic swept over her.
‘Don’t worry, sometimes they don’t make their presence felt until a bit later.’
‘I’ve read about things like this happening, about women not knowing they were pregnant.’ Star gulped. ‘I could have gone full term and given birth under my market stall.’
‘Situations like these are rare but not unheard-of, you’re right. Especially as your periods are so awry. But here we have living proof that little miracles can happen. This baby was meant to come to you.’
‘Yes, I do believe he was.’ Star smiled shakily.
‘He?’ The midwife laughed. ‘Now that is a confident prediction.’