‘Just tea.’ Maddy stands at the kitchen door and stares down the hall. She has a sudden urge to rip the wallpaper off in shreds. It feels like her home, her life and her family have been violated. She strokes her bump.

‘Did they say you’re both doing well?’ Sarah asks.

Maddy wonders if she could find a decorator by the end of the week.

‘At the hospital…?’ Sarah comes over and touches her arm.

‘Er yes, all well. Sorry, I’m so tired. I need to eat more but the thought of it makes me feel ill.’

‘Are they worried it’s a bit on the small side?’

Maddy stares at her.

‘Do try and eat a little something, maybe mashed banana on toast?’

Maddy knows she means well, but she really doesn’t need any of her advice right now.

‘Any luck finding out why Max resigned?’ Sarah clears away the girls’ plates.

Maddy gazes into space.

‘Maddy?’

‘Nothing so far.’

After Sarah and Sophie have gone home, Maddy opens the ironing board in the sitting room. She sorts the basket of clothes into piles. Max’s polo shirts and jeans go straight into a black bag, except one T-shirt and a pair of jeans. She irons the T-shirt and hangs it with the jeans on the back of the door. Next, she irons and folds Emily’s clothes into a neat stack and takes them upstairs to put away.

In their bedroom, she hurls open Max’s wardrobe doors and yanks his shirt sleeves one by one, as though she’s tugging at his arms. The naked wire hangers jangle and swing. She pulls jumpers and T-shirts off shelves and slings them behind her, like sloughed-off remnants of him.

‘Daddy’s clothes!’ Emily screams, running into the room.

Maddy glances over her shoulder, but the jumper she’s thrown across the room is still airborne. It lands half on the bed. Emily scoops up a bundle and pushes them back in the wardrobe and tries to shut the door.

‘You don’t understand!’ Maddy’s shout is more like a growl, pulling Emily away, teeth clenched, dragging the clothes out in a heap on the carpet, strewn in different shapes like they’re a pile of bodies. Emily tries to push the clothes back again and Maddy grabs her arms to steady her, but they collapse together onto their knees, sobbing.

Chapter Eighteen

Max: Late August 2011

By the end of the summer, Max had been living with Maddy for five months. She seemed eager to please him, both in bed and when they were working on her house together at weekends.

‘I was never allowed to bring boyfriends home,’ Maddy said one Saturday evening.

‘What, even as an adult?’

He took his T-shirt off to have a wash in the corner basin. When he turned back, she was staring at his chest.

‘I’ll have to start charging for that.’