Her son, Ryan, was there that day, with Connor. Is it all connected? Has something happened today that could have caused a row with Fergus?

In my mind I can still see those two savaged birds on the step.

I’m frightened too.

Chapter Five

Aidan

Aidan hesitates for a moment before dropping the dead birds into the bin. Lucy has such a soft spot for animals. The birds are wild but she’d probably want to bury them in the garden under the apple tree, along with Connor’s hamster and Kieron’s goldfish which they’d laid to rest in shoeboxes the boys had decorated with brightly coloured felt-tip pens.

He pats his pockets. Stupidly, he forgot to pick up the keys for his work truck but he still has the keys for the Audi he’d driven to the hospital earlier. It’s not as if Lucy will need to go out.

It’s best she stays at home.

His hip throbs the way it does when he’s stressed or exhausted or the weather is cold.

It isn’t cold.

He feels terrible that he has turned away from his wife tonight when she was sad and scared, his children who need so much from him. Is this how Fergus felt when he left Melissa? Was he sorrowful as he packed his bags? Angry? What was going through his head? They’d never talked properly about what happened at the residential but Fergus seemed fine afterwards, hadn’t he? Not straight away of course, he’d been apologetic, guilty but… he was okay, wasn’t he?

Aidan can’t believe Fergus has split from Mel without talking it through with him. He had no idea his friend was so unhappy. Last time he saw him they’d played darts in the pub and chatted about the latest updates from NASA. He seemed okay. Normal.

Can anyone ever really know what’s going on in someone else’s head?

As he drives, his mind switches to thoughts of his wife, not the Lucy of now, guilt-ridden and frightened, but the Lucy he’d fallen in love with.

He misses her.

He catches glimpses of her sometimes. The way she confronted Mr Peters earlier, insisting she knows what’s best for Kieron and perhaps she does. Late at night sometimes he catches her poring over her computer, staying up to date with the latest research, the glow of the screen softening the lines on her face that have deepened through stress. His breath catches as he is reminded once more how much he loved his wife.

Still loves his wife.

She doesn’t give up.

Early in his career as an equine vet, during those heady first years of romance, they had been lying in bed, limbs entwined, her head on his chest, his hand stroking her hair, when he’d been called to an emergency.