She replaced the photo, wiping some dust off it with her sleeve. ‘Did he have any more kiddies? It’d be nice for Jack, if there were. I never had another.’

‘No. No, we didn’t – we didn’t have any.’ So the problem must have been me after all, if he had fathered a child. As I’d always feared, there was something wrong with me, and no surprise, given where I’d come from.

Eleanor, you little bitch.

My mother’s words, echoing through the years in my head, as if I’d never escaped her. As if fire and blood and death had not been enough.

‘Oh, right. Guess he had it done then after all? I thought he was just sounding off, never thought he’d go through with it.’

‘With what?’ I was really struggling to follow her, my brain inching itself along, winded by revelations.

She frowned at me. ‘The vasectomy? After what happened with my pregnancy, Sean was so angry he said he was going to get one, make sure he never got caught out again. I assume he did it?’

Suzi

Suzi

Being down in the cellar was how I imagined being dead. No one could hear me – it didn’t matter how much I screamed and shouted. The expensive soundproofing Nick had put in for his ‘music room’ was doing its work, and anyway, who was there to hear me out here?

I wondered where Nora was, why she hadn’t come to look for me in days. Had she worked out somehow I was on to her? Perhaps she would prefer me down here, safely out of the way. In my more paranoid moments, when panic clutched at my throat, I wondered if they were in it together, Nora and Nick. A revenge pact, against you and me. If they had somehow engineered your death too. I would not have believed it, but I would also not have believed that Nick, my mild-mannered husband, had been building a soundproofed prison right under my nose, and had locked me up in it. Oh, it was nice enough, this prison. There was carpet, and a bed with soft sheets, and he gave me plenty of water and food, coming down several times a day to check on me. There was even a loo, which he’d suggested putting in during the rebuild for when we had guests, and I had agreed to, listlessly, as I did with everything. I’d been trying to wash myself in the sink, but without a proper shower I already smelled.

The first time Nick came down, I raced at him. Tried to hit him, claw at his eyes. He just held my wrists until I subsided. He was stronger than I knew – all those gym visits. Another thing I had missed.

‘Stop it, it’s bad for the baby.’

‘You can’t do this!’