Anna laughed and it hurt her head. ‘No sane woman would go to meet a stranger in the middle of the night, on an unlit path.’

‘Perhaps you met a guy, you hit it off, you had a romantic walk and were so caught up in the moment that you didn’t realize you’d wandered off the beaten track.’

‘It’s all checkable,’ she said, dropping her head into her hands. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?’

Douglas went and leaned against the door, his arms crossed, his head dipped, deep in thought. To Anna it felt as though he was deliberately blocking her exit. Eventually he spoke. His voice was soft.

‘You’re going to have to admit to meeting a lover but refuse to tell them who it was. There’s no other way.’

‘So Angus gets off scot-free. He tried to kill me.’

‘It’s the lesser of two evils.’ He stepped forward and dragged out a chair, sat down and leaned towards her. ‘Look at me.’

She looked into his face and her breath quickened. Even now, she wanted him.

‘Do you love me?’

She nodded.

‘What did you do with the mobile?’

After Nick’s death Douglas had erased all their text messages and had bought them both pay-as-you-go phones. She had used that to contact Angus.

‘It’s in a bag under my bed.’

He went upstairs to get it and she moved into the sitting room and lay down on the sofa, pillowing her head on a cushion, because she felt so weak. She could hear him above her. She and Kai were in his hands, but at least she wasn’t alone any more; she was speaking to her parents again. When she woke up, her mother and father had been at her bedside. She had felt the enormity of what she had done by cutting her and their grandchild out of their lives. Last week they had finally met Kai and they already loved him. It was time to let bygones be bygones. She thought about water under bridges. It was an idiotic saying because the water kept coming. Nothing ever really goes away.

Kai was a worry. The Foremans wouldn’t be able to keep him for long. He either had to come home or spend a week or so with her parents, just until she was capable of looking after him again. She couldn’t imagine looking after herself, let alone her energetic son.