Maggie twisted and bucked in an attempt to throw him off. It was a game they had played since he was very small. She had done it with Seb and Leo, but they had not enjoyed it nearly as much as Max. He shrieked with pleasure, laughing uncontrollably. It was a strange thing; despite the circumstances, he was a very happy child. Of course, he had no sense that he was missing out on anything, because he knew no different. In some ways it was the perfect set-up for a toddler: unfettered access to his mum and a guarantee of her undivided attention. Nonetheless, Seb and Leo had not been as happy as Max was. Seb was quiet, and prone to outbursts of crying. He’d been like that ever since he was born, sleeping fitfully and whimpering in his crib during the day. Leo was more like Max, but had a wild temper. From time to time, and without apparent reason, he would have screaming fits during which he was totally unreachable. He would hit her, and, if she tried to hold him, claw at her cheeks.

She had put it down to living in a tiny room, but then Max came along, and she wondered whether it was simply the way Seb and Leo were. Nature, not nurture. After all, if it was all down to circumstances, they should all have been the same – this was the perfect way to test. In normal life there were other things that could influence a child’s development, but not here. This was like a cruel experiment designed to examine how three children in the exact same environment turned out differently.

And Max, unlike the brothers he would never meet, was as happy as they came. Perhaps Seb and Leo got it from their dad – she hated even thinking of him as their father, but it was true, at least biologically – and Max took after someone else. He certainly had a look of her brother, the same fair hair and innocent, questioning blue eyes, the same goofy smile and easy laugh.

That was one of the things she regretted most, when she looked at her third son: that he would never meet his uncle, and that her brother, who had been a constant, daily irritation through her unfairly truncated teenage years, would never get to be the mentor to his nephew that he would, in her imagination, have become.

James would have loved him. He would have loved all three of her sons, with the same fierce, painful love that she did.

But Max was the only one she had left. He was the only one James would ever be able to love, and all she wanted in the entire universe was to save him so he could meet his uncle and have the life he deserved.

And she was going to.

Somehow.

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