They were a lot later getting home than Helen had originally told Alice they would be. She’d insisted that they celebrate with two glasses of champagne, and after they paid the bill and left, they decided to walk the long way home. They went through the locked park, climbing over the gate to get in like two giggly teenagers, enjoying the crisp summer air. They kept stopping to kiss, the way they used to when they were first together and couldn’t keep their hands off one another.

By the time Sean turned the key into the lock of the front door, it was 11.25 P.M. All the lights were still on downstairs, and Helen sobered up enough to tut when she heard the sound of the TV coming from the living room. Alice should have gone to bed an hour ago.

She dumped her handbag on the bottom stair. ‘Ali? We’re back. Sorry we’re later than we – oh!’ She walked into the living room to find Alice fast asleep on the sofa, and immediately dropped her voice, as Sean followed her in. ‘Look, Sean, she’s sparko, bless her!’

‘Have you checked to make sure Larry’s not hiding under the coffee table?’ They both laughed softly. ‘You wake her up, darling, while I go and check on Frankie.’

Helen climbed the stairs, smiling to herself. She didn’t usually like to make love late at night – too tired to feel suitably receptive – but the prospect of a baby banished her tiredness. She went into the bathroom and chucked her unopened contraceptive pills straight into the swing bin. Then, even though she was dying for a wee, she came back out and crept down the hallway to Frankie’s bedroom. The cartoon dinosaurs around her magic lantern threw soft violet and peach shadows around the room as she pushed open the door, waiting to see the hump of her in her toddler bed – she always manoeuvred herself into a sort of prone kneeling position when she slept, as though praying to Mecca.

But there was no hump. At first, Helen thought she was just lying uncharacteristically flat under the duvet, which was pulled up, as though she was hiding. Fear flooded her entire body, as though dropped on her out of a bucket above her head. She ran over to the bed and whipped back the duvet.

Frankie was gone.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2
Patrick – Day 1

He was hallucinating children. There, in the space between lamp-posts, a shadow thrown against a wall by the headlights of a passing car. Another at the entrance to an alleyway, submerging into the darkness like a night-swimmer going under, slipping from sight. A small figure in the rain, weaving between legs in a crowd. A white face against a smudged bus window. A city of little ghosts. Then he would blink and rub his eyes and the child would be gone.