It was Chrissy who phoned the doctor; then in quick succession several things happened. The police arrived and strung tape up across the nursery door and then there were people in there taking photographs, examining the room like it was a crime scene. The coppers asked question after question. Who found the child? At what time, precisely? There was a party last night, was there anyone in the house who might want to harm a child?

‘What you saying?’ Charlie roared. ‘You think I got some stinking pervert among my friends? These people, I’d trust them with my life and with my son’s life too.’

‘Charlie,’ said Nula warningly, clutching at his arm as they sat side by side, shocked, in the sitting room, and answered these questions that were nothing more than an annoyance.

Then most horrible of all, the ambulance arrived and they took the baby away. It was Charlie, not Nula, who clung on to little Jake, who said no, they couldn’t take him. It was Nula who calmed him, who said, it was OK, this was what they had to do. That it wasn’t their fault.

‘Then whose fucking fault is it?’ Charlie demanded, crashing about the place like a fury, smashing glasses, turning over chairs, needing something, somebody, anything, to hurt.

Then he turned on Nula. ‘You never did care about the kid, did you?’

‘That isn’t fair, Charlie,’ she said, while watching their friends, the people they were closest to in all the world, vanish out the door, taking themselves away from this tragedy, out of reach of Charlie’s catastrophic temper.

Nula felt numb. She’d been so ill during Jake’s pregnancy, so tortured, so afraid, that when the baby had finally arrived, she’d seen Jake as a miracle. A gift from God. But now she knew she’d been wrong to think that. The Stones were cursed because of the evil trade they dealt in. Nothing good could ever come to them. Of course not. She’d been mad to ever think it would. They’d sold their souls to the devil years ago. All they had was Milly, poor plain little thing, who never seemed to be a part of their world, and Harlan, who had never been more than a substitute for the child they should have had.

So Jake had been taken from them. It was no more than they deserved. Certainly no more than her raping bastard of a husband deserved, doing that to Jill Barton. Now Charlie was hurting and in a dark secret corner of her heart Nula was glad.

The police with all their questions somehow made it even worse. It was already like knives were being dug into her, and those words, those suspicious eyes watching her, turned it into a waking nightmare.

‘Just keep out Charlie’s way,’ she told Chrissy. The girl nodded and left to tend to Harlan.

49