Jo held Ruby as she cried. She’d been expecting something like this for a while. Ruby had starting talking about trying to apply for permission to see Leonie and wouldn’t understand that there was little chance, as an unrelated person, that the child protection order would allow it. Adoption by Ruby and Sam would have been entirely out of the question. Things simply didn’t work that way.

“When you’re ready,” said Jo, “I have some photographs. I’ve been keeping them for you. If it’s too much, then I can—”

“Let me see them. Please.”

In each photo, Leonie was happy. They had mostly been taken in a large and wild back garden full of play equipment, where she laughed as she went down a slide, smiled as she marveled at some frogspawn, giggled as she was pushed on a swing by an older girl.

“That’s her new sister there, with the red hair,” said Jo. “She’s one of four, now.”

“So many children to play with,” said Ruby. “She really looks happy, doesn’t she?”

“She really does.”

“So why do I feel so sad?” Fresh tears spilled on to Ruby’s knees. “How did you do it, Joanna?”

“Do what?”

“How did you let me go the way you did? I only knew Leonie for a few months. I didn’t give birth to her. How do people do these things? And Constance. I’ll never understand the choice she made at Cleethorpes.”

“I understand why Constance did what she did. And although it’s hard, I understand why you’re going to let Leonie go too. Because the choice you have is almost the same one Constance faced. To keep her and sacrifice everything that you have, or to let her go so that she can be happy elsewhere—so that you can live. That’s not a choice, is it? Constance would have been kept by that man her whole life if she’d stayed. At least she had a few days with her family before … she fell.”

“But I could have taken care of her. I promised Constance that I would.”

“You would have been battling the system for years, unable to get on with your life. Leonie wouldn’t have been free either. Look at her.”

In the photograph, Leonie was about to blow out the candles on a huge cake in the shape of a number two. Just behind her, a cheeky boy had been caught in the act of trying to blow them out for her, and the big sister was policing the situation by grabbing him, a fierce look on her face.

“I see that it’s the right thing for her,” said Ruby. “I see it and yet. I want her with me. I miss her. It hurts.”

“And this is why I’m so grateful for what Marianne did for us.”

“Marianne?”