Hanging up, I delved in my bag for my purse, still thinking about the children and the fact I should try to make up with James, if only for the children’s sake, when I sensed someone watching me. I looked up sharply. Across the road I thought I saw Danny Callendar standing in the shadow of a shop canopy, leaning back against the glass window, hands in his pockets, staring right at me. My heart felt like it had just stopped.

But when I dashed out onto the street, looking desperately amongst the busy shoppers and the ladies who lunch, he was nowhere to be seen.

Chapter Ten

The house was so quiet when I got home, it was unsettling. I fed the cat, and then made myself some tea and took it out into the garden. It was chilly now, just before dusk. I sat on the bench beneath the magnolia tree that was about to bloom, its pale buds like hands tightly cupped in prayer.

I contemplated the past week’s events. I couldn’t see what the right thing to do was any more. I thought I should probably stop, not for James’s sake or my own, but for the children. Who was I truly chasing Kattan for? I was lying to myself. But if I gave this last thing up, what was there left for me, apart from motherhood? Just James and I struggling to get through the days.

The cat came out for a while and made a half-hearted attempt to catch a couple of chaffinches on the bird table, but they were too fast for him. Despondent, he slunk back inside.

The sun set, sinking slowly into the wood behind our garden. James was right: I couldn’t do everything, couldn’t be all things to everyone. I was deeply intrigued by Maya Kattan and her father but I should turn my back on this life, at least for now. James’s words in the car echoed in my ears and I remembered LA: the guns and the panicked yelling police and the grim-faced gang members cursing and sobbing over their baby brother, who’d died for a bag of heroin. I’d been eight weeks pregnant with Alicia without realising it at the time; I’d been racked with guilt when I discovered I might have risked my baby’s life. I’d sworn then never to put any of us in any danger ever again, and up to now, I’d kept my word.

I sat outside for so long my tea grew cold and my fingers were blue around the cup by the time the weak sun had finally disappeared for the day. I went back inside and had a hot shower to warm up. Then I tried to ring James, thinking we should make peace, but his voicemail was on, though his plane must have touched down in Vietnam by now.