Everything in my life is crumbling. Except for Stella and what we have. At least, I hope … God, I hope she is still with me. Still believes in me.

She keeps me together. She makes me want to be a better person. A good person. A lovable person. But she’d be ashamed of me if she knew what I’d said to Heidi upstairs. She’d be ashamed of me if she knew how I’d challenged my mother.

So when I cry, I’m crying for me and the bitter, harmful woman I know lurks inside, for Stella and her naive trust in me that I am a good person. I’m not. I never had the chance to be. He made sure of that.

‘It will be okay,’ she whispers into my hair as she pulls me into an embrace as his coffin is carried past me. ‘I promise you, it will be okay. I’m here for you. I will be here for you. No matter what. You’ve got me.’

As I truly allow myself to believe what she is saying, I vow that I’m going to try to find it in me to tell her the truth. The horrible, shameful truth.

Chapter Forty-Four

Heidi

Now

I’d woken in the early hours, our house dark and silent, and had listened to Lily’s soft breathing from her cot beside our bed. Alex’s parents were forever telling us we should have her in her own room by now, but I can’t bear to be apart from her. She’s not even six months old. Still tiny. She’ll be in her own room soon enough, and for long enough.

For now, I need to know she is safe and secure. I need to feel the security that having her close to me brings me, too. The coming day will be hard and I need to remind myself there is good in the world. It’s two days since Joe was brought back to Marie’s house. Two days of mourning. Of stilted conversations. Of awkwardness. Of walking on eggshells. I’m exhausted to my very soul by it all. Exhausted by the paranoia and trying to fend off the negative thoughts that swoop in on a regular basis, making me want to hide.

I want it to be over. I want to be back to my life, my family. This child who means so much to me.

The golden rule, of course, is never to wake a sleeping baby, but when I had woken, I’d needed to hold her. I’d crept out of bed and lifted her, warm and soft, her breath sweet with milk, and had placed her in the bed beside me. She’d fussed – ‘fissled’ as my mother used to call it – but didn’t wake, and I allowed myself the luxury of holding her, stroking the soft skin of her cheeks, kissing her tiny fingers and marvelling how I had any part in making something so pure and so innocent. I’d drifted off at some stage, only waking now, Alex standing at the bottom of the bed in the half-light of the room, panicking about where Lily is.