‘I’m so sorry,’ he says.

‘What for?’ I ask him.

He opens his mouth to speak, but we hear the back door open and Ciara steps out – a mug of tea or coffee in one hand and her e-cig in the other.

‘I’m not disturbing anything?’ she asks.

Alex shakes his head. ‘No. No, of course not. Actually, I was just going to go and check on Lily.’

‘Might be a good idea. I think I heard her crying a few minutes ago.’

I bristle. ‘Could you not have told us?’

‘I am now,’ she says matter-of-factly as she draws on her e-cig and releases billows of steam into the cool air. ‘It doesn’t do babies any harm to cry it out now and again. They have to learn to self-soothe,’ she says.

‘I think that’s for us, as her parents, to decide,’ I say as we rush back to the house.

‘Well, I didn’t know where you were. For all I knew you were upstairs with her.’

She steps out of the way to allow us to walk back into the house, but not far enough that my throat doesn’t catch with the rancid smell of whatever it is she has been vaping.

‘Heidi,’ she calls my name and I shoo Alex on, even though I can’t hear Lily crying now.

I turn to look at her. She looks like she has the weight of the world on her shoulders and she’s about to unload some of it in my direction.

‘What do you think they’ll find?’ she asks.

‘I have no idea,’ I reply.

‘Don’t you? I mean trouble in this house seems to follow you around.’

I don’t like her tone. I don’t like where this conversation could go. I certainly wasn’t prepared to help her go there.

‘As I said,’ I repeated, walking past her, ‘I have no idea what they might or could find and I’m not really in the mood to discuss it with you further. We’re not children any more, Ciara. I’m not some wee girl desperate for you to like me, or treat me with an ounce of decency. I can walk away from you at any time I choose and I’m choosing to do that right now. My child needs me.’

I don’t wait to see if she has anything else to say, but as I climb the stairs to find Alex and Lily, I feel my nerve go a little and some old demons swoop in.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Heidi

Then

I’d always wanted a sister. I’d tried to build a relationship with Ciara in the haphazard way a nine-year-old tries to build friendships with anyone. I shared my sweets. (She didn’t like toffees.) I let her play with my dead mother’s make-up, even though I really wanted to keep it in a box to use myself when I was older. I gave her a bottle of perfume, one that Mum only used occasionally so it didn’t hurt too much to part with it. I offered her a loan of my dolls, even Scarlett.