They were closing St Paul’s Cathedral to sightseers as I finally reached the great stone stairs. For too long now my life hadn’t made any sense; I had to know the truth. Someone, somewhere, had to know the truth.

Inside, the internal gate was shut.

‘Please,’ I gasped at the curate closing up. ‘Please, I have to – I’ve come so far.’

That someone might be here.

‘You look pretty desperate,’ the jolly curate relented, waving me through with his walkie-talkie. ‘Last one in. This one’s on God.’

‘How do I get up to the Whispering Gallery?’ I wheezed gratefully, leaning on the barrier for a moment to catch my breath.

It took me ten minutes to climb up, and my heart was banging so hard by the time I’d reached the gallery in the huge dome that I had to sit down as soon as I got there. I’d passed a gaggle of Italian tourists coming down the stairs, but otherwise the space was empty. I thought he hadn’t come, the anonymous writer – and I heard my name said softly, and I turned and saw him.

They say that when you’re drowning your whole life flashes before your eyes – though it seems unlikely that anyone could confirm it. True or not, I felt like I was falling backwards now, splashing messily through my own life.

He walked towards me, thin and no longer elegant, wiry-limbed and crop-haired instead.

‘Hello, Rose,’ he said, and I tried to find my voice.

‘I thought,’ it came at last, ‘I thought that you were dead.’

PART ONE

Chapter One
GLOUCESTERSHIRE, SPRING 2008

It wasn’t turning out to be one of the good mornings. Fred had been up three times in the night simply seeking company, so my eyes now stung with tiredness. Alicia was in a foul mood because Effie had scribbled all over her new birthday sketchbook in purple felt-tip. Effie had insisted sweetly that she was dying for porridge until finally I caved in, and spent ten minutes stirring it like an automaton, whereupon she spat the first mouthful dramatically all over the floor and refused even one more try, citing the ‘yucky bits’.

‘Put your other slipper on, Freddie. The floor’s freezing.’

‘It’s lost,’ he announced dramatically.

‘It’s not lost. It’s on the radiator there.’

He turned earnest eyes on me. ‘Superheroes don’t wear slippers, Mummy.’

‘Well super-heroes are going to have horribly cold feet then, aren’t they?’

I wondered plaintively for the three hundred and sixty-fourth consecutive day why James couldn’t get up just once and make the struggle with plaits, porridge and a three-year-old’s tantrums at least partly his own.

‘I want my milk warm, Mummy,’ Effie puffed, abandoning the cornflakes and dragging the milk bottle towards her across the table.

‘Just have it cold, Ef, OK?’

‘I want it warm,’ she pouted and promptly upended the entire pint over the flowery tablecloth.