He told me his name was Bill and we chatted for a while about the snowfall, how this was the worst he’d seen since the 1950s, and about his wife, Hetty, who’d always loved the snow, but who had died five years before. I sensed he was lonely, like me. Visibility was terrible, but the road had been gritted and traffic was at least moving. After an hour or so, we reached the lights of Guildford.

‘I’ll drop you direct. Can’t have you walking in this weather.’

I was almost sad to see him drive off as he dropped me in the car park. The hospital blazed with light, with humanity, a well of brightness against the dark. I knew I would find help here, or nowhere.

Suzi

Suzi

An hour later, I sat at the kitchen table. I was dry, dressed warmly in jeans and a polo-neck jumper. Nick had served me up some stew he’d made.

‘Good?’

‘Lovely.’ It needed more salt for my taste, but of course that was ‘bad for the baby’.

‘I forgot the veg box was coming, so we had all this stuff left over. I’ll have to cancel it for next week.’

This was surreal. We were chatting about veg boxes, when just hours before I’d been locked up in the cellar. I had told Nick everything – almost everything. About meeting you, our affair, your death, going to the hospital, meeting Conway there. My guess that Conway was planning to blackmail me, maybe, and that’s why he’d had my details. I remembered his down-at-heel clothes, his alcohol breath – I could well believe he needed money.

It hadn’t been easy, telling Nick these things, but he’d nodded, as if he knew most of it already. I didn’t mention my meetings with Dr Holt, or the fact I’d seen Damian again. I could still rescue this situation. Get on cordial terms with Nick, then as soon as the snow melted I could run away, far away, to my mother’s perhaps, or to Claudia. She would help me, I thought, even if we’d grown apart. I’d stay in a hotel if I had to. I hadn’t quite realised that the law was there to help me, to make sure I had access to the money, and above all, to let me keep my baby. I just had to avoid going back in the cellar, and after that everything could be sorted out.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked timidly. ‘It’s such a mess, Nicky.’ An old nickname for him, back from when we’d loved each other. A time I knew had existed, but which I could hardly remember now.

He sighed, his elbows on the table. ‘I don’t know. We could go away, maybe. Abroad, somewhere warm. Wait till the baby comes.’

‘And then?’