She watched as Ben’s paper-shuffling stopped and his body came to a standstill. She watched the slow rise and fall of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed, the gentle elevation of his rib cage as he breathed in and then out. It was as though the world had paused, neither of them knowing quite what might follow.

“No, he’s not. Zach, he . . . Well, he . . . he died a few years ago.”

Ben turned toward her, deep creases lining his forehead, and Audrey could feel the distress spreading across her face. She was conscious of an echo in her ears, and she readied herself to reply, hoping the right response might emerge before she gave herself away. But instead of the sound of her own voice, Audrey heard only a rush of air around her ears and the dull thud of flesh against wood.

And then everything went black.

Chapter 26

Jess

Jess stood in the middle of a field in the far reaches of west London, watching the director talk to the two lead actors, their heads bent together like children conspiring in a playground.

The crew reset and the director’s assistant called for quiet. The camera turned over and the scene began again.

Jess looked at her watch, wondering how much longer she’d be at work today, thinking about the pile of washing that had to be done, the carpets that needed vacuuming and the bathroom that required a long-overdue clean. Sometimes when she was on location Jess couldn’t help feeling that somewhere out there, real life was happening while she watched pretend life repeat itself again and again.

Her mind began wandering into fantasies of how different her life might be had she not got pregnant years before she was ready and spent the last months of university battling morning sickness instead of studying for finals; had Iain not asked her to move in with him immediately after she graduated and had she not mistakenly believed that his maturity—twenty-one years her senior—meant he would provide the security she craved; had she understood, at the time, that her fear of returning to Barnsbury Square was fueling a decision that would determine the rest of her life.

She thought back to that day, standing in the kitchen at Barnsbury Square, an overnight bag at her feet, waiting to hear her mum’s reaction. On the radio next to the microwave, All Saints had been singing “Never Ever,” and Jess had turned down the volume even though it was one of her favorite songs.

She remembered her mum standing opposite, hands gripping the back of a kitchen chair as though needing to steady herself in the face of Jess’s news.

I can see how disappointed in me you are, Mum, but I’m not going to change my mind. I’m having this baby whether you like it or not. Jess recalled the defiance in her voice, alongside the conviction and the confidence. Even now she didn’t know how she had managed to sound so certain when it had been such a long way from what she’d felt. So many times prior to that conversation she had pictured her mum’s response: had imagined her smiling, folding her in her arms, giving her the answer to a dilemma she didn’t know how to resolve. In each imagined scene, Jess had felt the tension between them dissolve, had felt the news sweep aside all the years of caution and mistrust, narrowing the distance between them. It was a fantasy she hadn’t even known existed until she’d become pregnant. But as soon as she had learned she was having a baby, she had wanted more than anything—more, even, than Iain’s promises to stand by her—to feel close to her mum again. But instead, as they had stood opposite one another in the kitchen, Jess had been aware of the chasm between them widening.