He nods his head.

‘Good boy,’ I say, hooking the bucket handle over my wrist. ‘But first we need to get our coats. It’ll be cold out there.’

There are two bread rolls and some tangerines on the kitchen counter. I take a roll and hand it to Joe.

‘Here, baby. You eat this while I go and get our coats.’

I pull a chair out and lift him on to it.

‘Mummy have some,’ he says, breaking off a piece of bread and handing it to me. ‘Make Mummy better.’

My eyes fill with tears but I blink them away as I take the morsel of bread. I can’t let Joe see me crying.

‘Mmm,’ I say as I eat it. ‘That is delicious. Thank you. Now you enjoy the rest of it and I’ll just grab our coats.’

He nods his head but as I walk away the familiar guilty feeling returns, gnawing at my stomach. He shouldn’t be here. He should be at home in the warmth with all his familiar things around him. But then I think of that newspaper article, the police, the look in Mark’s eyes, and I know that if I cave in now I will lose Joe for ever. I grab the coats from the hook by the door and rush back into the kitchen, fearful that Joe might have disappeared into thin air in the seconds since I left him, but he’s still there, happily munching away on his bread roll. I stand for a moment looking at the back of his head, his curly hair matted from sleep and sticking out at all angles, and I feel my heart will burst. How is it possible to love someone as deeply as this? To feel like you will die without them yet would happily die for them? As I look at him I whisper, under my breath, that things are going to get better, that I will stay strong now, with no distractions, no doubts.

‘Right,’ I say briskly, heading across to him. ‘Let’s get your coat on.’

He looks up at me, breadcrumbs scattered across his front, and holds up his arms. I lift him down from the chair, put his coat on, then mine, and as we head outside to the lake, I feel something resembling peace.

The air is cold but the sun is out and it casts a horizontal light across the surface of the water as we approach the lake. There is something pure and clean about the day, the sharpness of the air, the pale-grey luminosity of the sky, that makes it seem like the world has been swept clean overnight; that we can start again.

Joe trots off ahead of me, pausing by the edge of the lake to pick something up off the ground. I walk faster to catch up and when I reach him he looks at me and hands me a pebble.

‘Present,’ he says, his blue eyes reflecting the winter light. ‘For you.’