Page 24 of Hidden Daughters (Detective Lottie Parker #15)

This was not how she’d imagined giving birth to her child. Within cold, bare walls. Surrounded by iron-faced nuns with stiff wimples, ratty veils and camphor-smelling gowns.

Despite everything, she wanted her family by her side.

She wanted him too. He had promised. Hadn’t he?

Another pain ripped through her and she felt the urge to push the child out of her body.

‘Not so fast,’ one of the nuns said. She had no idea which one. They all looked the same.

‘It’s coming!’ she yelled.

Unable to hold on for a second longer, she gritted her teeth and pushed with the little strength she had left.

Then… relief. The pain was gone. The child was out. She could fall into a restful sleep. But there was pushing and shoving around the bed. Heads bowing and looking, and then she felt towels or sheets being bundled up under her legs.

Where was her baby? Was it a boy or a girl? She wanted to ask these questions, but all her strength seemed to have left her body.

They wouldn’t tell her anything, just whisked the baby away from her after cutting the cord. She thought she would die from the heartache.

But a fate worse than her baby being stolen from her awaited in the not-too-distant future.