Now, he was going to go out for a run. In the middle of the night. And then he was going to have a shower. And then – then – he was going to try to figure out what the hell was going on. Because there were three women he was going to see tomorrow: Rosie in the morning, with her new baby and her innocent smile, Holly Bhattacharyya with her proud stare, and now Eva – Eva in the evening, with her opinions and her ideas and her spiky hair and her voice. God, he missed her voice. And he knew without a doubt that he wanted to hear whatever it was that she had to say.

James woke before his alarm, the kind of waking that won’t allow you to go back to sleep again, and lay still for a while, the unease making him search for nightmares that he couldn’t remember. He thought he’d dreamed that something awful had happened, though as he ran through every member of his family, he knew they were safe and sleeping soundly. The guilt, he thought, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, was probably due to missing dinner last night – well, not so much missing the dinner but having to lie as to the reason. Was that it? He sat up silently so as not to wake Julianne. His feet found their slippers, tucked halfway under the bed. He was glad. The floor was cold.

He could see their point, the directors, which was why he was going along with it. There would be panic that could damage lives – if people stopped trusting the pouch then it would change everything. All he needed was a little more time. To think that, just yesterday, he’d almost spoken to Avigail’s daughter about what he was working on. As if he could have a normal conversation about his work and she would just understand that it had to be kept secret. That she might thank him. Had he really imagined she might appreciate what he was doing?