"There's just as much poverty and hardship in the country as there is in a city. It's just that it's a different kind of poverty and a different way of life."

Three weeks after Garth's leave had ended, Claudia sat up in bed and promptly felt so acutely nauseous that she knew, even before the routine doctor's test had confirmed it, that she was pregnant. Even so, she waited until she had that confirmation before telling Garth.

"It's bad news, I'm afraid," she told him as calmly as she could, the telephone receiver sticky in her hand as she tried to blink away her tears.

"I'm pregnant.

Garth. "

As she listened to him asking if she was absolutely sure, Claudia guessed that he had to be as dismayed by the news as she was herself for all his reassuring comments before he went back off leave. It wasn't that she didn't want a child--a family--she did, they both did, but not yet, not until their lives and their marriage were more sturdily established.

After she had said her goodbyes to Garth and replaced the receiver, she squeezed her eyes tightly closed and fought to suppress her tears.

It isn't that I don't want you, she told her baby silently. It's just that this is too soon. I'm not ready. We're not ready.

Why, oh why hadn't she remembered to take those wretched pills?

Tiredly, she looked round their small cramped flat. It was completely impossible for them to bring up a baby here--even if the landlord would allow it, but she already knew he would not. And then there was her job. Janice had remarked earlier on her pallor and noticeable lethargy. The work she was doing was both physically and emotionally demanding, their department too busy to have any room to carry someone who wasn't up to working at optimum output.

There would be those, she knew, Janice among them, who no matter what they said publicly would privately believe that she was using her unexpected pregnancy as a cop-out, a way to save face, which would allow her to leave a job she simply wasn't up to.

But she was up to it, she defended herself fiercely. It was just that as yet she hadn't mastered the art of detaching herself enough emotionally from the people she was dealing with.

"You're too involved," Janice had warned her again only the other evening when she found Claudia folding some old blankets into the boot of her car. Having coaxed them out of her own and Garth's mother, Claudia intended to give them to the growing group of homeless vagrants who took shelter every evening under the disused railway arches that Claudia passed on her way home.

"They won't thank you for playing Lady Bountiful," Janice had warned her once she had cross-questioned Claudia on what she was doing.

"I don't want their thanks," Claudia had returned quietly, ignoring the older woman's taunt.

Tiredly, Claudia pushed away the keyboard on which she had just been finishing up a report. The clock on the wall showed that it was just gone six o'clock. Most of the other staff had already left, although it wasn't unusual for any of them to work into the evening. Claudia was so exhausted it almost made her feel sick. Even the effort of pushing her chair back and standing up made her grit her teeth. Why on earth should carrying a baby, so small as yet that it scarcely qualified for the term, so small, in fact, that she, its mother, had actually lost weight rather than gained it, demand such an intense concentration of energy that it left her as physically depleted as though she had climbed Everest?

Wryly, she made her way back to the spot where she had parked her small car and unlocked it. Ten minutes later as she let herself into the hallway of the flat, she looked at the stairs in dejection and then slowly started to climb them.

By the time she had reached the flat, she felt sick and dizzy. As she put down the shopping she had collected during her lunch hour, she opened her bag for her key. Suddenly, the flat door opened and Garth was standing there.

"Garth." She blinked at him stupidly.

"What are you doing here?"

"I live here," he told her cheerfully. Then with a grin, he reached out and plucked her off the floor, swinging her up into his arms.

"I managed to wangle a twenty-four-hour pass," he explained.

"You sounded so fed up on the phone that I-Hey... what on earth are those for?"

he demanded gently as she started to cry.

"I'm sorry... I don't know..." Claudia sobbed, then added between hiccuping tears, "Yes, I do. I'm frightened. Garth. I'm not ready for this. We didn't plan--' She didn't get any further because he was holding her tight, kissing her forehead and then her mouth before telling her with loving firmness, " Now you listen to me. Everything's going to be fine. We may not have planned for this to happen quite so soon, but now that it has. " He paused and when Claudia looked uncertainly into his eyes, he told her softly, " I love you so much, Clo. -even more than ever now if that's possible. I love you both," he said passionately, placing one hand possessively on her stomach, then adding teasingly, 'and if it turns out to be a boy, I think we'll call him Hector."

"Hector? No... never," Claudia objected, outraged, asserting determinedly, "Anyway, he, it... is going to be a girl." Her laughter faded quickly, though, as she shook her head and protested, "You really shouldn't have come home." She knew how difficult it was for him to get extra leave, but Garth stopped her.

"I wanted to be here with you, with you both, and anyway... let's have a cup of tea and then we can talk," he suggested.

"You go and sit down. I'll make it ... you look whacked."

Claudia tried to smile but it was a distinctly wobbly attempt.

Five minutes later as they sat cuddled up together on their small sofa. Garth told her quietly, "I've decided to leave the army just as soon as it can be arranged."

"Oh, Garth," Claudia protested.

"I know we've been talking about it, but not yet. You--' " All right, yes, perhaps I will be leaving sooner than I'd planned," Garth agreed, 'but that doesn't matter. I'm going to give Nick Forbes a ring and see if he was genuine about that offer of a job. I think on balance that he was."

"Oh, Garth."

"Look, this baby is as much my responsibility as yours, probably more," Garth told her ruefully, thinking about the weekend the baby had been conceived. The tour of Northern Ireland had been even more stressful than he had expected and the release of tension had caused a sexual urgency to burgeon within him, had sparked such a need to be alive so that perhaps in some ways it was inevitable that the creation of a new life should be the result.

There had been such a fear of death on that tour that it would have been extraordinary if they had not been affected by it and by the sense of having escaped from underneath its weighty, oppressive shadow with the need to celebrate life.

He could understand now why those who had completed several tours there said they got to a state where they felt they were involved in a macabre game of Russian roulette, wondering with each fresh tour if this would be the one from which their return would be in a wooden box.

But he made no mention of any of this to Claudia. They had, of course, talked about the fact that he was a serving soldier. She knew the risks--she was, after all, a soldier's daughter. But he could see quite clearly how vulnerable the pregnancy had already made her--had heard it in her voice when she had rung him with the news. His first instinct was to protect her and the new life they had created together, and so far as he was concerned the best place, the only place, for him now was at her side.

He would leave the army and hopefully get a job with his father's old school friend; they would buy a house in the country but within commuting distance of the city. The future, if not rosy, certainly looked reasonably bright. In his arms, Claudia started to relax.

You've changed. There's something different about you. What is it? "

Claudia sucked in her breath sharply as Katriona fired the fierce questions at her.

Surprisingly for someone with the extent of the drug habit that Katriona possessed, she could be very intuitive as Claudia was quickly learning.

"Nothing..." Claudia began, only to instinctively place her hand protectively across her belly as the youth who had been lying in the corner of the room on a piece of filthy sacking got to his feet and started to lurch towards her.

"Leave off, Oz/ Katriona told him.

"She's my probation officer not a supplier."

To Claudia's relief, the youth turned away from her, stumbling towards the stairs instead, pausing to retch nauseously in the doorway as he did so.

"He took a bad trip last night," Katriona told her emotionlessly, shrugging her shoulders dismissively as he clattered down the stairs.

"He won't be around much longer." Graphically, she drew a line across her throat and then laughed when she saw Claudia's expression.

"I.

suppose you think the same thing about me, don't you?

Don't you? " she demanded, her earlier good humour giving way to sullen anger.

Her lightning changes of mood were as much part of her personality as her drug habit, Claudia observed, responding to her quietly.

"Katriona " You're pregnant, aren't you. aren't you? " Katriona suddenly demanded wildly, ignoring Claudia's attempt to talk objectively to her.

"How does he like that, your fine army husband? I bet he's not too pleased. They never are " As a matter of fact. Garth is delighted," Claudia interrupted her sharply, then realised her mistake. She could see from Katriona's triumphant expression that she knew she had got under Claudia's professional guard.

"Garth," the girl mimicked mockingly.

"So Garth's delighted, is he?

Well, aren't you the lucky one. I got pregnant once. The father wasn't delighted. He told me to get rid of it. " She heard the betraying sound Claudia made and laughed.

"There wasn't any need in the end. I lost it, didn't I? Just as well.

Not that the likes of you would ever know anything about that. Planned it all beforehand, had you? What did you say to him? Come on, darling Garth, please fuck me now so that I can get pregnant and then I won't have to go and see that dreadful Katriona any longer. Of course, your baby will have every thing, won't it? A delighted mummy and daddy. everything of the best. I expect Mummy is getting the christening robe down from the at tic already, isn't she? The same one that you wore when you were christened, the same one she wore. "

Claudia saw the bitter resentment clouding Katriona's eyes as she mocked her. The girl's anger and jealousy were so intense Claudia could almost feel and taste them. For the first time in Katriona's presence, she felt a sharp thrill of fear--not for herself but for the baby, and for the first time since she had discovered she was pregnant, she felt the deep stirrings of real maternal love, the maternal instinct to protect her unborn child. For the first time, she realised how much she did want her baby. Their baby, hers and Garth's.

"Have you thought any more about this rehab programme?" she asked Katriona firmly, ignoring the girl's taunts.

She wasn't three months pregnant yet, but just as soon as she was, she intended officially to tell them at work she would be leaving.

Garth had approached Nick Forbes, who confirmed that he meant every word he had said about wanting to employ him; and he had even mentioned a salary that far exceeded anything Garth had hoped for.

"With that, we'll be able to afford to buy something pretty decent as long as we look outside London," Garth had told Claudia enthusiastically.

Both sets of parents had been given the news that hopefully they were to become grandparents and they had responded with natural excitement and enthusiasm. They were an extremely fortunate young couple as Claudia was the first to acknowledge.

Garth was going to be a wonderful father. His reaction to her unplanned pregnancy was showing her a side of him that made her love him all the more deeply--and allowed her to show her love for him all the more uninhibitedly.

"Being pregnant suits you he had told her one night after they made love.

"It makes you very sexy."

"You don't think we might have harmed the baby, do you?" Claudia had asked him in some alarm, the darkness hiding her blushes as she acknowledged that her response to him had been more passionate and intense, more womanly, as though her pregnancy somehow conferred on her a new and more sultry adult status.

"No way," Garth had reassured her, adding softly, "After all, that's how he or she got there in the first place, isn't it?"

Cupping the back of her head with his hand, he very slowly drew her down towards him until she could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin.

"Have I told you lately how much I love you and how very sexy you are like this?" he asked her in a whisper as his free hand stroked the curves of her body.

"I'm going to get fat," Claudia protested.

"You're going to get sexy. You are sexy," Garth corrected her.

"It's fashionable to be thin," Claudia reminded him.

"All the models--'

"All the models are bags of bones," Garth told her extravagantly.

"They can't hold a candle to you. Being pregnant suits you." As he bent his head to kiss her, Claudia relaxed into his embrace.

During her lunch hour earlier in the week, she had been tempted into a store special ising in baby things. Garth had already insisted that he wanted an old-fashioned, easy-to-steer, as he put it, traditional coach-built pram.

"For when I take him out on a Sunday morning while you're preparing lunch," he had told her teasingly.

Claudia had laughed back. Now that she was over the initial shock of her pregnancy, she was as thrilled at the prospect of becoming a mother as Garth was a father. It was, after all, what she had always wanted. Having children, a family, for her was a very important part of what being married was all about and she could now understand and accept far more reasonably the words of one of her tutors that she had taken as criticism.

"Your maternal streak is very strong," he had cautioned her, 'and you'll have to guard against letting it take control and lead you into making incorrect assessments of situations.

"Mothers tend to be notoriously blind to the faults of their offspring."

"I'm due to see the CO soon," Garth told her. Hearing the tension in his voice, Claudia raised her head and looked anxiously at him.

"Are you sure this is what you want to do, leave the regiment?" she asked him.

"I know I said that I didn't want our children to be army brats like I was, but. "

"No, I feel exactly the same as you do. If I'm honest, one of the main reasons I went into the army was because I didn't really have any stronger idea of what I wanted to do. After going through public school and then university, I suspect that, psychologically, it felt safer opting for a career that echoed the same familiar, organised type of routine."

Gravely, Claudia nodded her head.

"It does tend to make you feel slightly institutionalised, our kind ofeducation," she admitted."Institutionalised!" Garth gave her a wry look."Oh, thanks. Once I've spoken to the CO, though, we're going to have to get busy thinking about where we're going to live."

"Somewhere in the country," Claudia suggested promptly.

"I'll be working in London," he reminded her, 'but, yes, I agree. And

preferably somewhere with a bit of land, close enough for both sets of parents to visit, but not too close. "

"No, not too close," Claudia concurred.

"I'll start making enquiries with a few estate agents, shall I?"

"Mmm..." Garth agreed, nuzzling the delicate and so sensually responsive spot just behind her ear.

"But remember to tell them we want plenty of bedrooms."

"For when we have people to stay? Whom are you planning to invite, the