They walked along in the shadow of the old stately home. The nurse was out of earshot: perhaps now they could talk about what they were going to do to get the boys back.

“Patrick, I—”

“Listen, darling. I need to say something first. Earlier, when Ruthie was here, and the boys were crying,” said Patrick, “I know it sounded like they were making words—”

“Yes.”

“Well, you don’t really think they were, do you? It sounded like words, sure, but they weren’t actually speaking. You know that, right?”

Lauren didn’t say anything. She stopped walking, and looked him in the eye. Smiled a little, looked away. For a moment she thought she might cry. But then she took a breath and smiled again, with more certainty. So, she was alone in this, as in everything.

“Of course I know that, silly. They’re only four and a half weeks old. They can’t speak yet.”

He drew her towards him, held her pressed against his body. After a while he pulled back and smiled at her, brushed a springy strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Nearly five weeks now,” he said. “Seems like a really long time. Almost like we’ve always had them.”

“Time feels like a completely different thing now. To what it was before.”

“Yeah,” said Patrick, though he sounded unsure.

They walked in silence for a while, across the soft grass towards the chain-link fence where you could look out over the valley.

They both watched the back of the nurse up ahead, pushing the stroller in the sun.

“What do you think will happen to that girl, Natasha?”

“I don’t know,” said Patrick, his voice clipped. “I suppose she’ll be charged with abduction.”

“That’s if it was her. I’m still not sure how it can be …”

“Huh,” said Patrick, “if you knew her, you’d know this is just the kind of thing she’d do. She’s vicious.”

“In a way it doesn’t matter what she’s like. I’m supposed to look after them, protect them from danger. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t fallen asleep in the first place.”

“You can’t blame yourself, my love. You were having a hard time. I should never have insisted you go out. I’m so sorry.”

He turned towards her and she saw that tears stood in his eyes, waiting to fall.

“I’m sorry too,” she said.

“You’ve nothing to feel sorry for.”

“I do though, for what I did when they were given back, trying to push them into the river. But I couldn’t help it, I thought they’d been swapped over—which is nonsense, of course. Then, when you brought them to the unit, I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. I was missing them so much. I must be going mad.”