Disconcerted, Connie turned in at number 24. Reluctant to shut herself away in the flat, she followed the path around the side of the house and, using the key Kenneth had recently given her, unlocked the padlock on the gate. Another one of his security measures. Last week, she’d heard him yelling at Mrs Kolinski for leaving the front door open. Mrs Kolinski hadn’t reacted, only closed the door quietly in that calm way she had and continued up the stairs with Eva.

Dorothy’s housecoats and aprons were pegged out on the line. Connie glared at them and then forced herself to calm down. Dorothy wasn’t to blame for her son’s absence or for the trip to that awful house. It was Connie’s fault for making the decision to sleep with Johnny in the first place, for believing him when he told her how unlikely it was she’d get pregnant.

How stupid she’d been, listening to him. It wasn’t as if she was naive and didn’t know about sex. There had been enough conversations at school, and her mother had always been careful to explain things. Not like some of the other mothers. She remembered one of the girls in her class, Eliza Langtry, who’d screamed blue murder in the toilets when she’d started her period. She’d thought she was dying, literally bleeding to death. The other girls had laughed, but Connie had felt sorry for her.

Before. That was how Connie saw it. Two halves of her life. Before her mother had died and after. Not that she could live by that rule now. Her life had changed again. This pregnancy had become a new before and after.

The end section of the garden was cut off by an overgrown curtain of bushes, plants and leaves. Behind the curtain was a patch of earth and Kenneth’s roses, of all kinds and colours. He had given Connie a tour once, described spraying and deadheading and mulching and knowing your roots. She’d been surprised by his passion. Beyond the roses, next to the old shed and set into the wall, there was an arched doorway that led straight into the graveyard, though it was never used and was blocked by weeds. Connie usually visited her mother’s grave via the lychgate on St Michael’s Road, but now she was here, she decided to take the shortcut, even though she had no flowers as she usually did. On impulse, she seized a pair of secateurs from the shed and snipped the stem of an early, errant rose.