“Yup. I’m not sleeping brilliantly at the moment. Bloody insomnia. I’m trying not to stay up too late. Get a bit of a routine back. Maybe I need some of your sleep tonic.”

He laughed. “Maybe you do.”

“What’s in it? Constance was out like a light after she had some.”

“Secret recipe,” said Gregor, tapping his nose. “Well, I guess it’s not that secret. Chamomile, essence of lavender. Valerian. And a tiny bit of alcohol, of course.”

Ruby had to stop herself from blurting, Alcohol? And you gave that to the baby? She covered her reaction with a cough and an interested smile.

“Help yourself. No more than half a spoonful, though, if you’re not used to it. It’s pretty good stuff.”

In the bathroom, Ruby opened the cupboard above the sink. There was a brown bottle with a spoon beside it. She took out the bottle, unscrewed the cap and sniffed. It smelled sweet and chemical, not like alcohol at all. She poured a full spoon and swallowed. Bitter.

Before she even arrived at home, her legs were as heavy as concrete. She woke up fourteen hours later, face down on the carpet in her apartment, the front door ajar, unable to remember how she got there. Thankfully no one had robbed her. As she dragged herself to her knees, felt the roughness inside her mouth and the pain in her head, one thought surfaced, white-hot and shining with fury. He gave that fucking stuff to Leonie?

CHAPTER

28

NOW

Joanna

Sunday, December 23

ON THE WAY to the New Park Estate, Joanna thought only of Ruby. There was so much she’d never said to her that she thought perhaps she should have. It had never been the right moment, and now it might be too late. Rain started falling as she crossed the city, the sky blackening with her thoughts.

Jo had been so careful to avoid getting between her mother and Ruby in the early years, that for most of Ruby’s childhood she’d absented herself, keeping herself busy at first with school and college, after hours with her sports, and in later years with her police training. She’d learned to live with the nagging, aching feeling that she worked hard to suppress, knowing deep down that this was the urge to be a real mother that she had not only been denied but had actively denied herself. For all those years the family went from day to day, doing their thing, ignoring the reality of the adoption, ignoring their mother’s alcoholism, ignoring Ruby’s feelings of rejection and Joanna’s of replacement. Right up until they couldn’t ignore it anymore. And Ruby had left them, taking half of Joanna’s heart.