‘Yeah, it is.’ She should go to the police, tell them Alison Wood has information about Max. But how can she face the humiliation of not knowing what’s been going on? Anyway, she wants to deal with it herself. If Max is alive, she needs to hear the explanation from him. She pushes the phone deep into her pocket. Now she can keep a close eye on Alison and if she knows where Max is, she will find out.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Max: February 2012

Max was soap washing the walls of the nursery when Maddy came in wearing dungarees, loosely held up over one shoulder. The other strap dangled to her waist.

‘Coffee?’ She stood sideways in the doorway, filling the gap with her bump.

‘Mmm, please,’ he said, squeezing the sponge in the solution and slapping it back on the wall.

‘We need to decide on a colour,’ she said.

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘I want everything finished in time for this little one.’

‘It will be. I’ll have the basecoat on by the end of the day.’

She stood facing him, the neat bump thrust forward, straining the strap in its buckle. He cupped her chin with his wet hand and looked into her eyes.

‘Trust me, okay?’ He gave her a kiss on the nose.

She smiled. ‘The cot will be delivered on Thursday,’ she said, ‘and I was thinking of bringing the rocking chair in here for when I’m nursing.’

Her face had a beautiful natural glow. Sometimes, when she wasn’t looking, he liked to observe her unselfconscious beauty. She was one of the few women he’d ever seen really bloom when they were pregnant. He’d never felt part of a proper family, but here he was with a wife and a baby on the way. He wiped his hand on his overalls and reached out to touch her belly. He shut his eyes as he felt for movement. Like a puff of smoke, thoughts of Ali clouded his head. What if it was her standing here with him instead? His eyes snapped open, disgusted with himself.

‘Shall we stick with off-white?’ Maddy asked. ‘Then it won’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy.’

‘Off-white it is then.’ He couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

They were in Marks & Spencer’s looking through a rack of baby clothes when Maddy’s waters broke, three weeks before her due date. An hour later, she was in Hillingdon Hospital wired up to a monitor. Despite looking forward to this moment for months, Max wished it was all over. They were told she was only two centimetres dilated, which meant it could be a long night.

As each contraction came, the tightening of her belly became harder to bear and with no quantifiable progress. The contractions were still six minutes apart, but Maddy seemed to perk up, even complaining she was hungry.