She should go check on Maude, she might be hungry, or thirsty, she might need to see a friendly face by now, and she’d certainly be glad to know her father was coming back, but Nell was still reluctant to climb up to the attic, to disturb her. She knew in her bones that even this piece of good news would be warped somehow, that the fact he had stayed away so long would be found to be her fault, that somehow she would have failed again.

She leant back against the sofa, her head aching. All she had ever really wanted was to be a good mum to Maude. Jess was, according to Chris, far too volatile, and so Nell had made an effort to be calm. Jess was inconsistent, so Nell tried to be reliable. Jess was given to grand gestures, and to emotional outbursts, she treated Maude like a younger sister half the time, and of course now she was thoroughly taken up with her darling baby boy. And so Nell – Nell tried to be a grown-up.

Bloody Jess.

After the initial fall-out, and that had been nasty, difficult for them all, Jess had moved on with irritating ease. There had been a couple of relationships before the whirlwind courtship with Callum, the wedding, the baby.

Nell closed her eyes. Tried not to cry.

Jess announcing her pregnancy at some stupid family lunch, confiding to everyone that it had been a total accident, but actually, wasn’t it wonderful.

It had never occurred to her that they wouldn’t have kids of their own. It seemed so easy for everyone else, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t get it right, and she was so tired of trying, of failing.

She closed down the email without responding, and went back to her research results; she’d check with Maude in a little while.

*

Searching her parents’ room was risky, Evie knew that, but with her dad still at work and her mum occupied downstairs, this was probably her only chance. She knew her mother kept important stuff, birth certificates, marriage certificates and the like in an old leather document folder. She just wasn’t sure where the folder was.

The chest of drawers first, then – if she had time – the wardrobe. It was hard to concentrate, mostly because she kept stopping and going to the door to double check that she was completely alone, but also because it seemed to be getting harder to remember where everything went – her mother would undoubtedly notice if any of her belongings were out of place – and she found she was arranging and rearranging the contents of the drawers, desperate that they should look right, undisturbed, the next time her mother went to them.

The wardrobe was easier, racks of clothes hanging neatly, sweaters folded on the top shelf, shoes in their boxes on the bottom.

Nothing.