‘Alex,’ I said, halting. Go on, just tell him who you really are. Be honest, for once in your life. But then his blue eyes settled on me, and I found that I couldn’t. That I still wanted just one more night of him, before he knew the truth. So instead I stepped towards him, and slid my arms around his waist, and buried my face in his neck, breathing him in.

Casey

Casey

AUGUST 2000

Waking up with a start was becoming a standard part of my life and I didn’t like it one bit. Jenna had always encouraged me to get ‘beauty sleep’, lying in till eleven if I wanted. Here, if it wasn’t the baby crying in the early hours it was Abby looming over me, telling me to get up. This time, however, it was Madison. She was standing in the half-gloom of my room, moaning softly to herself. I peered through one eye at the clock: it wasn’t even four yet.

‘Madison? Are you OK?’

Her moans grew louder. ‘I didn’t mean to!’

‘To what?’ I thought maybe she’d broken something, a glass, perhaps – Abby always went crazy if something like that happened.

‘It’s not my fault. It’s your fault.’

‘What’s my fault?’ I got out of bed, the floor cold under my bare feet. I couldn’t get used to the way hot California days evaporated into bone-chilling nights. The sun wasn’t up yet. ‘Madison, you have to tell me.’

Instead, she grabbed my hand with her sticky little one and dragged me down the hallway. She had never voluntarily touched me before, so I let her. The door to Abby and David’s bedroom was shut, and Carson was quiet for once in his. In Madison’s bedroom I immediately smelled what the problem was. Her sheets were dark with urine, and I now saw it was on her pyjamas too. She looked so ashamed, clutching at herself, hair in disarray.

‘I didn’t mean to, Casey! It’s not my fault, I didn’t do it.’

Her cover story needed work. ‘Who did, then?’

She looked shifty. ‘Carson?’

‘He climbed out of his cot, did he?’

She hung her head. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘I know you didn’t. It’s OK, it happens to everyone.’

‘Does it?’

‘Of course.’ In fact, I had no idea if that was true, or if I’d ever wet the bed myself. But I had never seen Madison act her age before, like a vulnerable child, and it touched me. ‘I’ll sort this out. Can you get into the bath by yourself?’

‘Uh-huh. And we won’t tell Mommy?’