Maggie slid one leg across his thighs and sat on his lap. Her smile told him that nothing was wrong and that these were happy tears. When she kissed him it wasn’t passionate, but slow and loving. Her hands explored him, as though rediscovering every curve. Jack didn’t touch Maggie, he simply enjoyed being touched by her. It had been so long.

As her hands slid down his torso and began unbuttoning his trousers, Hannah stirred. They froze and looked at the iPad, holding their breath. It took a second for the crying to begin.

Jack kissed Maggie and told her to ‘hold that thought’. He grabbed a bottle of breast milk from the fridge, blitzed it in the microwave and headed upstairs.

Maggie sat sideways on her hip, head resting on the sofa’s seat cushion and watched the grainy, black-and-white image of Jack feeding Hannah. In less than three minutes, Hannah was asleep in his arms. Maggie watched him put the bottle down, run his finger over the contours of his daughter’s face, down the bridge of her tiny nose, across her chin, and gently over her closed eyes. He put his finger in her hand and she closed her tiny fist. Jack stayed with Hannah for another ten minutes, just looking at her face and listening to her breathe.

As he walked back downstairs, he imagined Maggie would by now be comatose on the sofa. In fact, she was still on the floor, with her head on the seat cushion. Fast asleep. Jack sat back down on the floor and finished his now-cold chicken madras.

*

Back in the Cotswolds, George and Sally Barrowman’s house was dark apart from the hallway light, which suggested an empty home pretending to be occupied. Security lights flicked on and off, as foxes moved freely through the extensive grounds. The garden was rustic and rambling compared to its neighbours, but that’s how the Barrowmans liked it – the idea of wildlife sharing their habitat was important to their son, Mathew, so they had purposefully asked Charlotte to use plants that would naturally come and go with the seasons, with little intervention. This four-acre garden was home to mice, foxes, hedgehogs and an unknown number of bird species. It was a beautiful space.