But I had to be ready. ‘What do you know? What did he tell you?’ I had asked the detective to call my husband too; I had needed Robert to know everything I did – I couldn’t trust myself to relay the facts to him myself.

‘As much as he could. Everything they know.’

‘So did he say,’ I couldn’t seem to stop the shaking in my legs, ‘about how she just walked into the London police station, and about the house, and the little girl Tonia, and that she didn’t – that Abigail never…’

I caught myself, stemming my words, glancing down at the twins, busy on the floor picking Blu Tack off newspaper clippings, so small and innocent in the face of this news. Robert laid the pile of clothes in my arms and I pushed them into the empty drawer. There was no way she would fit them now, but I didn’t know what else to do with them, and all I wanted was to get this right. And it would be all right. Robert was here, beside me, helping me. I made myself slow, I made myself breathe, taking in Robert’s scent, the woody, musky deep smell of him, this man I loved and who loved me, who had brought such goodness into my life. We were a family, we had survived these seven years: me, my husband and our beautiful twins. But even as I held her clothes, knowing in a matter of hours she’d be here with us too – real, alive, home – I couldn’t stop other words, other images coming. ‘But the man, Robert—’

‘I know.’

‘Robert,’ my breath snagged in my throat, ‘they don’t know where he is, he’s still out there, somewhere, he could be anywhere—’

The drawer stuck on its runner and gave a shriek as I tried to push it closed. Robert caught my hand, his strong grasp steadying mine.

‘Anne.’ He turned me towards him so that I was looking directly into those warm, straightforward, honest eyes. I forced myself to hold his gaze and for the millionth time I wanted to tell him. He believed in me, he always had.

‘Anne,’ he said. ‘I understand, I’m overwhelmed too, but they’ve found her, she’s safe. Whatever has happened to her, you and me, we’re in this together, and all of us are going to be just fine.’

I wanted to fall, to sink into his words and let them embrace me, hold me, make everything okay.

But he could never have said that, if he knew about the lie.

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