‘Maybe. But that’s not why you’ll hate me.’ She draws a deep breath. ‘When Evan was first home, I was patient. I tried to understand the silence, the bolted door, and I tried to cope with the rejection, but all the while a voice was nagging in me, a resentful voice asking why he wouldn’t trust me. Why he wouldn’t trust us. We’re his mum and dad, and he doesn’t trust us. And you can say all those things about how damaged he is and I know it isn’t logical or even beginning to be fair, but there came a day – I couldn’t say when, exactly – when I needed some acknowledgement, some gesture of affection, just a hug or kiss to say, I know you’re there, Mum. But that’s never come. He seems so lost, so shut down, that I doubt that he’s ever coming back. And so I started thinking I don’t have a son any more. He’s alive but that’s all he is. He’s like some kind of hungry ghost, a shell of what he was, and he’ll never have any affection for us ever again, because that’s what those men have taken. We have Evan’s body, but they’ve eaten his soul, and he’s never coming back. And so I thought – and this is the really bad part – I thought if we didn’t have Evan, if Evan is going to be a ghost for the rest of his life, haunting us from up there in his room, I thought I don’t have a son any more and I want a son, so I thought we should start trying for a baby. A replacement for the son we didn’t get back.’

It’s not what Matt’s expecting. Despite his protestations of an open mind, he’s shocked.

‘A baby? Really? Sweetheart, I don’t think . . .’

She holds up a hand to stop him.