She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets wearily and sighed, feeling her emotions catch up with her. Then she looked at her phone again. At least she had Stanley and Harry, she reminded herself. And she missed them, she realized, feeling an ache inside. For all her doubts and self-blame, she missed her children and husband. I’ve just got one thing left to do, she had promised Mack when she’d last texted him – but now that she’d divulged her secret to Lorna and Roy, she wasn’t sure what the next step might be. Where did she go from here?

A lorry thundered alongside her and the car rocked from side to side. Momentum had brought her this far, but now it was as if her clockwork had wound right down and she found herself paralysed with indecision, motionless with uncertainty. Before she could possibly go home again, she needed to come clean with Mack: open the door a little wider on how she had been feeling and try to articulate her sense of worthlessness, her difficulty in coping. He must know by now that she was not the perfect mother she had tried so hard to be, but talking to Em and Maggie had made Olivia see that perhaps nobody was. Maggie had even been to the doctor to talk about how hard she was finding everything when her daughter was little. Maybe Olivia’s old habit of keeping her own anxieties disguised and pushed down wasn’t working any more. Maybe it was time that she too plucked up the courage and asked for help.

And if she did . . . would Mack still be saying, Come home, just come home, once he knew the extent of her struggles? Or would there be judgement in his eyes? Disappointment at her shortcomings?

Well, there was only one way to find out. She took a deep breath and dialled his number. ‘Hi,’ she said when he answered, then swallowed hard. ‘Have you got a minute? I need to say a few things.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Amelia lay on the hard, narrow camp bed and shut her eyes, feeling disgustingly homesick. Or Mum-sick, rather, if there was such a thing.

All around her she could hear the rest of the household moving about, getting on with the day. Thistle and Rain had been up for hours already, it seemed, watching cartoons in the living room and shouting out catchphrases. Then she’d heard Celeste running a bath and detected the faint herbal pong of whatever she was stewing herself in that particular day. Will . . . Dad – she still didn’t quite know what to call him – had been in the kitchen, whistling cheerfully as he organized breakfast and then she’d heard him calling to Celeste that he was going for a run, and the front door banging.