‘I know it’s rare. The disease is rare but it’s happening.’ I’m talking too fast. ‘It’s happening to us. And I just want… I just want Kieron to feel well and—’

‘I’m okay, Mum.’ Kieron slips his hand into mine and gives it a squeeze. He is so brave, my boy.

‘Let’s keep a closer eye on him.’ Rob taps on his computer. ‘We’ll keep on the antibiotics. I’ll see you in two weeks. Is the nineteenth okay?’

‘But—’

‘Lucy, if Kieron doesn’t need surgery that’s a good thing.’ Aidan pulls out his mobile and opens his calendar app. ‘I’m booked onto a conference on the nineteenth but Lucy can—’

‘But he will need surgery at some stage. We can’t pretend that he won’t.’ For a moment I stare at Rob, challenging him to meet my gaze. To talk to me as an equal rather than a parent. I’m incredulous that Aidan accepts everything he’s told. I can’t just put my blind faith in anyone with a white coat and a name badge, but, from the set of Rob’s jaw, I know it’s fruitless arguing. I can see that he has never felt the terror of a parent with a sick child. I don’t want to distress Kieron so I gather my bag and my doubts and my fears and we leave.

On the way home Kieron dozes. I don’t speak to Aidan. I can’t say what I want to say because I have left all of my words at the hospital, all of my hope.

I stifle another yawn as we pull into our street in silence. The spot under the beech tree is empty. The white car has gone but that doesn’t ease the sense that the house is being watched.

That I am being watched.

‘I’ll unlock the door before we wake Kieron,’ I tell Aidan as I climb out of the car.

I reach the front door but before I can slip my key into the lock I see it.

The dead bird on our doorstep.

Its black feathers are glistening, guts spilling over the concrete. My stomach drops, rollercoaster fast as I stare at it with repulsion.

‘I’ll get rid of it before the boys see it,’ Aidan says from behind me.

‘But…’ I swallow hard. ‘How do you think it got there?’ I want to ask who put it there but I’m desperate for a rational explanation I can hold tightly against my chest.

Someone has been watching me.

‘A gift from a cat, most likely,’ Aidan says.

But we don’t have a cat.

And neither do any of our neighbours.

It’s not only the weight of the unknown future pressing down on my shoulders, but the past.

It’s catching up with me.

‘Guilt is a rope that wears thin’ the old saying goes.