‘Please.’

She lifted his bandaged hand and had a closer look. He flinched.

‘No better then?’

‘A little,’ he said.

She poured hot milk into the mug. ‘So, are you going to explain to the girls why we didn’t go to the seaside? Emily has been talking about nothing else. They’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.’ She handed him the steaming drink.

‘I will, I promise. I’d have come home last night if I could, but they drugged me for the op.’

‘You need to tell the girls that.’ She glared at him and carried her drink upstairs.

He hadn’t meant to let them down, but it wasn’t his fault, was it? How could he explain it to them without telling them about Ali and Jamie and Tony? He’d have to try and make it up to them. They were his special girls. And now he had Jamie too. His son. He took a large sip of hot chocolate and scalded his mouth.

Chapter Forty-Two

Maddy: October 2019

Maddy stands outside the Red Cross charity shop. Bunty annuals are displayed on a table in the window. She has some at home, along with a pile of 1970s Beano comics and a couple of Matchbox cars Max bought at a boot sale. He was always saying how he couldn’t wait to dig them out for the children. He’d hoped for a boy when she was pregnant with Chloe; she guessed that, but he hadn’t said. She sweeps her hand across her bump.

There she is, stacking shoes without a care in the world. Sundress skimming her barely-there curves. Except her bump looks twice the size it was before. A ludicrous imbalance, taking into account her twig-like limbs, not even the circumference of her own wrists. Max lied when he said those skinny girls weren’t his type.

She did her usual check of Facebook before leaving the house. Alison posted late last night, asking if a cat would have left the dead crow on her mat. Maddy enjoyed trawling through the answers. Most agreed that a cat would have done it, while other people posted funny GIFs and told her it was a creepy warning.