THEY TRAVELED ALL day, not even stopping for their lunch of the promised curry: Ruby heated it up and took the tiller while Sam ate and watched Leonie. It was a bizarre situation; here they were, on the run from the police and Social Services, with a child that didn’t belong to them. Yet there was a sense of peace as they cruised along the canals and rivers. It was a different world from the one Ruby usually inhabited, that of cities and buildings, roads and vehicles. There was only the water, which meandered through farmland, and the boat, gently churning up the surface as they escaped almost comically slowly, at a leisurely walking pace. It was too serene to get stressed, though when she thought of the news article, her stomach tightened. She wanted to turn her phone on and search for more information about the case, specifically, which DS was working it. Did Joanna know already that it wasn’t Constance, but Ruby at the seafront?

The fact that it was Christmas Day made her think about what happened last year, and the many missed calls she’d seen on her old phone. She realized she wasn’t angry anymore, only homesick. Joanna hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. As for Marianne, she probably couldn’t even remember what she’d said. In the end it didn’t make much difference whether Ruby forgave her or not; the woman barely remembered anything from one day to the next. Forgiveness wasn’t about the other person, though. It was about drawing a line under something, and moving on. What Ruby had realized since knowing Leonie, was that once there was child in your life, you no longer had the luxury of deciding whether or not to forgive. What you did, you did for them. Her mother—both of her mothers—had sacrificed a lot for her, perhaps more than she would ever know. And they did it, not from a sense of duty, but because they chose to. Joanna chose to carry her to term; Marianne chose to bring her up. Neither was forced into anything. Constance, in contrast, hadn’t been given a choice at all.

That night, they moored on a deserted stretch of canal bank between two derelict working boats. Sam let Ruby steer as he jumped onto the towpath with the rope, guiding them in, using the light from his powerful head torch. Leonie was already asleep on the bean bag underneath the table, her thumb in her mouth.

In the frozen dark, Ruby helped him to tie the boat up, then they both went aboard, down into the saloon, and shut the doors behind them. The heat enveloped her like an embrace. After a while they sat together to eat another delightfully unfestive meal of canned spaghetti on toast, washed down with fizzy orange.

“We should go on the run every year,” she said. “It’s kind of nice.”