‘You did?’ But what about me? I wanted to say. What about me? ‘What if – something happens with the baby, and I need to get to hospital?’

He gave me an irritated look, letting the curtain fall back down. ‘Suzi. Can’t you just enjoy it?’

I’d learned since being here that many things are only enjoyable if you do them with someone else. If you’d been around, if we were together like I had briefly, foolishly thought we could be, we could have gone tramping over the fields in wellies, perhaps sliding down hills (very gentle hills for me), making a snowman, stopping off at some pub for hot chocolate laced with Baileys (again, not for me. Pregnancy ruined so many things). I felt briefly nostalgic for something that had never happened, a fantasy from the past. It would never happen now. You were dead. Once again, it struck me like a punch to the stomach. I couldn’t believe it.

I went downstairs while Nick was in the shower, put the kettle on the Aga. The room was freezing, despite the fancy new underfloor heating, so I turned up the dial, and was glad to feel it start on my icy feet. I scrubbed a space in the window and stared out, pleased that I at least wouldn’t be expected to garden today. Even Nick must understand the concept of a snow day. And I was grieving, though he didn’t know it. What difference did it make, to know you were dead, if I was never going to see you again anyway? It meant you didn’t dump me. Maybe you were on your way right then to tell your wife. Maybe we could have been together. A spasm of what might have been hit my solar plexus. I couldn’t think that way. Had to keep going for the baby.

Was there something in the snow out there? Tracks – an animal of some kind? Maybe Poppet had come back. Thinking how happy Nick would be, I wiped aside more condensation, my hand dripping and chilled. Then I went cold all over, a cold that came from the inside this time.

In the snow was written one word, in deep angular letters.

SLUT.

Nick thought I was crazy. ‘You can’t go out in it, it’s freezing.’ I was doing my best to stop him looking out of the window.

‘It’s just so pretty!’ I sounded vaguely insane. ‘I’ll run out and take a picture.’ That was plausible, at least. I put on boots and seized my phone and then I was out, turning off the alarm and scuffing my foot through the words in the snow, heart hammering. Who had done this? No one ever came here, except me and Nick or Nora. She’d been so supportive, why would she do something like this? Someone must have come in the night.