It’s natural to want to try the coat on, to know how it feels. The weight of it is surprising. She rummages in a drawer for her mother’s bottle of perfume and squirts it behind her ears, breathing it in. In the mirror she sways this way and that and her hands dip into the pockets. An edge of something digs under her thumbnail. She pulls out a square of paper, folded at least a dozen times. Scribbled on the outside, in her mother’s perfect handwriting:

Don’t trust anyone!

Maddy’s body jolts. Slowly, she unfolds the paper and with a gasp lets it flutter to the ground. ‘You knew all along,’ she says aloud to the mirror. It’s her mother looking back at her. She can hear her mother’s voice saying the words: Don’t trust anyone. Maddy slowly shakes her head. They’re the words Mum kept repeating in her final days. Dementia had stolen the person she knew, but was she saying this in more lucid moments? When did she find his list? How long did she know? All that time Maddy kept his secret to protect Mother, but she already knew he was seeing these women, their own friends and neighbours. Every one of them pretending to her, arranging play dates and dinner parties. And Father, the biggest charlatan of them all. The late-night meetings and overnight stays in Bristol, Manchester and London when all the time he was across the road in someone else’s bed. Is this what Max has been doing to her? Are there other women and he’s with one of them now? Or is he really dead? She picks up the piece of paper and rips through it, shredding the names into tiny pieces; all the while she is being watched in the mirror.

Chapter Thirty

Alison: October 2019

When she arrives back from work on Saturday, Alison hopes to see Adam’s van on the drive, but again there’s no sign of it. Her heart thuds like a stone on wood. None of her friends have seen him lately. Where can he have gone? Why isn’t he answering her calls and texts? The thought of calling the police crosses her mind, but if something had happened to him, they’d have contacted her, wouldn’t they?

Once inside, she calls up the stairs out of habit, and for a moment she thinks she hears a muffled reply. Jamie drops his coat on the floor.

‘Pick that up,’ she yells at him. She unloads the shopping on the kitchen counter.

‘I’m hungry,’ he whines, making a half-hearted attempt to hang his coat on a peg. ‘I thought you said Dad would be back.’

‘If you listened, I said he might be.’