‘Did you hit your head or something?’ He gently moves my hair away from my face with his hand and my heart flutters in my chest. I can’t remember the last time he touched me so tenderly. ‘I can’t see any swellings or contusions.’

I used to joke with the kids about Mark’s ‘medical speak’ after he got a job as a medical sales rep. It was almost as though he’d become a doctor himself with all his talk of angina, stents and angioplasty. Apparently it’s very unusual for someone without a medical background or degree to get a job selling pharmaceuticals to GPs and hospitals but Mark’s never been one to let someone telling him he can’t do something get in his way.

‘We didn’t realize you were missing until tea time,’ Jake says and I have to smile. I don’t imagine they would have. They’d have returned home after work and congregated in the kitchen, sniffing the air and peering into the oven and fridge. ‘Dad said you were probably round at Liz’s, pissed off with us for screwing up Billy’s appeal.’

‘Pissed off with who—’ Mark starts but Jake interrupts.

‘And then Liz came round and told us that you’d rushed out of her house and you weren’t answering your phone. She was really upset. She thought she’d said something to upset you.’

Mark shifts away from me now his ‘examination’ of my head is complete, but his eyes don’t leave my face. ‘What did she say?’ he asks.

I shake my head. If I tell him he’ll only agree. Mark’s told me over and over again that we should assume the worst about Billy. ‘Six months is a long time, Claire.’ It’s become his mantra, his invisible shield against hope whenever I tentatively suggest that maybe, just maybe, Billy could still be alive.

‘It doesn’t matter what she said.’

‘It does if it made you run off to Weston without telling anyone.’

I slip my handbag across my body, then stand up and rub my upper arms. ‘Can we just go home? Please, I just want to go home.’

Mark stands up too. ‘I think we should get you to a doctor first. Don’t you?’

Chapter 11