There’s a beat. The smell of bleach burning his throat. Tears burning his eyes.

‘Aidan, siblings save each other. Connor thrived while Catherine didn’t. I had to have an emergency section because Connor would have reversed the blood flow in the womb to try to save Catherine. Ryan could save Kieron now.’

Aidan glances at Kieron and then at Ryan. He doesn’t feel the same level of protectiveness with Ryan that he does with Connor and Kieron. He doesn’t feel love.

What he does feel is the burden of guilt and he knows that this will never leave him. For the first time he has a glimpse into how Lucy must feel each day, so knotted up inside, regret swimming fast as tadpoles through her mind.

His wife feels guilty about many things that aren’t her fault.

He thinks it’s driven her mad.

Chapter Eighty-Six

Lucy

All that I have left of Catherine is her tiny hand and footprints on the mug Aidan made me on my first Mother’s Day. I glance at Kieron, so young, so innocent, so much like Catherine. If I’m going to lose another child, I want it to be on my terms. I left it up to nature before and look what happened.

I’d trained as a transplant surgeon. It wasn’t originally what I wanted to specialize in when I began my degree in medicine, but by the time I graduated five years later, I knew without a doubt it was what I wanted to do. It was another two years to get my postgrad and a further six of specialist training before I realized my dream, but my dream turned to ashes the second I returned to work after losing Catherine. My first patient was a baby with cardiomyopathy who needed a transplant and the thought of losing her on the table, of her tiny heart stopping beating the way Catherine’s heart had, caused my hands to shake so violently I had to walk away. I couldn’t bear being responsible for another life. For months I stayed at home. Concentrated on raising Connor but after a two-year break I was itching to go back to work. I thought I’d have a complete career change, but nothing excited me in the way medicine did. I thought of the intricacies of Aidan’s pelvic surgery when he was in his twenties, how he’d likely have never walked again if it wasn’t for his orthopaedic surgeon, and after weighing up the pros and cons in depth, I decided to retrain. To offer hope, a new beginning, the way that Aidan had been.

‘Are you sure?’ Aidan had asked. ‘It’s another four years’ residency. Is it what you really want?’

What I really wanted was Catherine, but I couldn’t have her and I needed to do something.