Maggie heaved with sobs. He held her to him again. He inhaled deeply. Despite what she’d been through, despite where she’d been, she smelled exactly as he remembered. He inhaled again.

He felt something kick him in the stomach. The boy started to cry.

‘Mummy,’ he said. ‘I want you, Mummy.’

Martin stepped back and looked at him. He kissed Maggie again.

‘Who’s this?’ he said.

‘This is Max,’ Maggie said. ‘My son.’

Sandra wiped tears from her eyes.

‘Hello, Max,’ she said. She put a hand on the back of his head. ‘He’s beautiful. He looks just like James did at that age.’

Max shrank away from her touch.

‘He’s not used to all these people,’ Maggie said. ‘He doesn’t know you’re his grandparents.’ She looked at James. ‘Or his uncle.’

‘He can take all the time he wants to get used to us,’ Martin said. ‘Let’s go home.’ He turned to DI Wynne. ‘If that’s OK?’

She smiled. ‘That’s fine. I’ll get Maggie some shoes. I think we have some trainers she can wear.’

She left the room. Martin looked at his wife and son and daughter and grandson and his heart swelled with love for them all.

He put his arms around his daughter. She pressed her face against his neck.

‘Welcome back, Fruitcake,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going to be OK, I promise. Better than OK. It’s going to be perfect.

Epilogue

Six months later

Maggie had chosen to wear bright colours for the funeral. There had been enough darkness in the last twelve years to last her a lifetime, and she felt it was right to be dressed in red or green or yellow or whatever she wanted.

The two small coffins were at the front of the funeral parlour. She did not want a church funeral; she had never been much interested in religion and whatever vague faith she might have had, had been extinguished in the room. No god she wanted to worship would do that to her.

Or Max.

Or Seb, or Leo.

They had found their remains in Delamere Forest. The man – Colin Best, he was called – had refused to divulge the whereabouts of Seb and Leo’s bodies at first; but then another prisoner had broken into his cell – it had been left unlocked in an unfortunate oversight – and the next day Best said he was ready to tell the police where the bodies were.

The police exhumed them, and they were not the only bodies they found. There was a pet cemetery of people’s dogs and cats, along with the body of a woman in her twenties. The police thought it might be a prostitute who had gone missing in the late nineties.