How is your mother?

Jazz read the quavery words and nodded. ‘She’s fine. Worried about you, obviously.’

Tom wrote again.

You will look after her for me?

Jazz choked back a sob. ‘Oh Daddy, you know I will, but you’ll be home soon to do it yourself.’

I’m not frightened.

Jazz was struggling to hold the tears back. She couldn’t reply.

How is case going?

‘Not well, to be honest. I’m still struggling to tie any of the strands together, but I’m sure there’ll be a breakthrough. There usually is when I’m on my knees.’

Tom was scribbling away.

Look to the past for wisdom and the future for hope.

Jazz nodded. It was one of her father’s favourite sayings.

I love you darling and I am v proud.

Tom’s hands sank onto the bed, exhausted with the effort. He nodded slightly, then closed his eyes.

Jazz removed the notebook and pen from his hands. She studied his faint scrawl, the sight of its fragility tearing her apart. She grabbed her father’s hand and stroked his forehead gently as he slept. Please, God, I know he loves you but we love him and need him, too. Don’t take him yet, not yet . . .

Chapter Twenty-Three

Adele Cavendish zipped up the holdall, then dragged the two large suitcases to the top of the stairs. She walked back into the bedroom she’d shared with her husband for the past twenty years, then closed the wardrobe doors to hide the empty rails behind them.

She went to her bedside table and picked up the small framed photo of Charlie when he was a tiny baby and stuffed it into a side pocket of her holdall. She looked around the bedroom one last time, then shut the door behind her.

Heaving the first suitcase down the stairs, she left it at the bottom in the hall and went back for the other one.

Once the holdall and the suitcases were safely stowed in the back of her Volvo, Adele came back into the house and wandered around the silent downstairs rooms.

There was no doubt it was a beautiful house, but it wasn’t a home, and hadn’t been for many years. When Charlie was back for the holidays from school, it had been possible to rekindle the dead atmosphere. The friends he sometimes brought with him would see to it that laughter echoed through the rooms and Adele would feel useful again, feeding the boys with vast meals to stoke their growing bodies.

But now Charlie was gone. And was never coming back.

William came home on a Friday, then returned Sunday night to his flat in London; Adele could almost see by the way he ate his Sunday lunch at pace that he was desperate to return to town, leaving his wife to clear up the dishes and face another week alone.

She knew many other wives in the surrounding villages who were ‘weekly widows’, whose husbands also worked in London. They seemed unperturbed by their circumstances, knowing the quid pro quo of an absent husband was their expensive lifestyles. They forged friendships with each other, filling their days with school runs, yoga and long lunches.