And despite myself – the tiredness, the mortification, the niggling fear, the hope – I laugh. Enough that, for a moment at least, I forget to think about anything else.

CHAPTER 17

I’m standing inside that cold light like a silver thread between the end of Mum’s bed and the glare of the nurses’ station though a small wire-grid window. I know she’s awake because I can’t hear the grating rattle in her chest and the back of her throat when she sleeps.

It’s okay, Maggie, she says. And her smile is serene.

But it isn’t.

And still I can feel all those people behind me. Watching. Waiting. Breaths held in expectant horror.

Mum’s smile fierce now, with pointed teeth. It’s coming. It’s close.

Air swirls in cold eddies around my feet and ankles, making me shiver and shake. And behind me now, the growing tap, tap, tap of claws against linoleum, against rock. The shatter of glass. Voices, alarms. So much noise that suddenly I have to press my palms hard against my ears until it hurts. Until that light becomes darkness and the silence one long scream.

You have to believe me, Maggie!

‘Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.’

Will has one heavy arm around me; his free hand moves the damp hair from my face as I blink against too-bright sunlight. I’m breathing hard, too hard at first to speak, to tell him that I am, in fact, okay. Night terrors are nothing new. Instead, I let him hold me, soothe me, until I remember that this was what I’d let Ravi do in the beginning, before both of us accepted my needing comfort being as routine as putting out the bins on a Tuesday.

I think of waking from a nightmare of shadows and rock and grass and the howl of the wind, my throat raw from crying. And Mum running into the bedroom, pulling me onto her lap, rubbing my clammy hot skin and holding me so tight I could hardly breathe. It’s okay, sweetie. You’re home. You’re okay. You’re okay.

I pull away. ‘I’m fine.’ I try to smile. ‘Sorry.’

Will’s own smile is uncertain. His eyes are worried and wary. All the things I hate. All the ways in which I do not want him to look at me.

I get up onto my knees before straddling his pelvis, rock myself hard against him. He lets me do it for only a few seconds before he flips me onto my back, his weight warm and new.

‘My way this time.’

He moves slowly, his gaze unwavering and intense, his arms a cage, and for a moment, claustrophobia is bigger than pleasure. He kisses me for long paralysing minutes, touching me until my skin is hot. When I feel the thick push of him inside me, almost painful but not quite, almost too much and not enough, I finally reach for him, pulling him close until there’s no space left between us. I close my eyes at my name on his breath, hot and unsteady. Give myself up to the need in him that is suddenly wild and only for me. That has no use for any kind of control at all.