Nula had no friends now. None of her old mates from the manor were interested in keeping in touch. They thought she was happy here, living among the country nobs and thinking herself better than the Londoners she’d once happily mixed with. Which wasn’t the truth, not at all. She thought of those old grey grimy streets and longed for them, longed for the old safe, settled life in her parents’ modest two-up two-down. But it was too late to even think of building bridges with them now.

So mostly she was stuck here, and then Harlan would come home and say nothing, but he would smile that secret smile of his and her flesh would literally crawl. Everything she suspected about Harlan haunted her, filled her every waking moment. She went to the local library and read books on reactive attachment disorder, sat there for hours poring over them, and it was as if it was Harlan they were talking about.

Without a primary caretaker, the books said, a baby passes through several phases: from protest to crying to a sad stage and then to a deep, desolate state of resignation. Thinking of Harlan’s dead-eyed stare, Nula wondered about his mother. Everyone had a mother, after all. A birth mother, anyway. So where was Harlan’s? Had she voluntarily put him into care, or – Nula thought of Charlie’s irritation, his rage when she’d questioned him about this – had he never been cared for at all, and was that why he never seemed to respond appropriately to anything or anybody?

On the way home from the library, Nula always went to Jake’s grave to tend it. She went there every week, pulled out weeds, refreshed the flowers. The girls came here too, Milly and Belle – they brought little posies of buttercups, daisies, cow parsley, which was sweet of them. Harlan never bothered. She thought of her baby, her precious child, lying cold and long-dead in the soil. And she cried. Oh, how she cried. Then she had to go home. Although she detested Charlie, she didn’t like him being away, because of the crying.

She’d heard it again, and again. So many times. But maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe it was only in her head. She’d caught Charlie looking at her oddly more than once. And then . . . ah Christ, what a fool she’d been. She’d told him about the crying. She shouldn’t have done that. Well, she’d better just get a grip. That’s what Mum had always told her: get a grip. Pull yourself together. Worse things happen at sea. That was the only useful thing her mum ever did teach her. Dear old Mum. She missed her so much now, missed her like a limb.