‘I’m doing my best, yes, love.’ She opened the door for me. ‘It can – it gets hard sometimes. But I’ll always be here.’

I really hoped that was true.

Outside in the gathering gloom, I sat in the car. It was a damp evening, the sky clutching only one visible star.

Which star though? Venus?

Or the North Star. A light to see me home.

Where was that though?

I plumped for Venus. I could use a bit of beauty in my life right now.

I’d tried to get the absolute truth: for who though? Who was I doing it for? Zach? Ruby? Myself?

For the sake of hope itself.

But I had to accept this was it. Cecilia said she’d told the truth – so why did I still feel so sick about it?

It didn’t make sense to me.

I sat in the car, staring at the old Nokia handset. I couldn’t get a map up; I wasn’t even sure where I was headed; who I could go to…

Abroad perhaps. Through the tunnel to France, on to Spain. I used to love Spain when I was younger. Where I lost my heart to the boy from Barcelona, and then my one chance at motherhood. Too scared to tell him, too scared to keep it. Not good enough to keep it.

I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand. Paying the price now.

Portugal, perhaps, would be better. No memories.

Cecilia would be all right. She had Lynette, after all, who loved her dearly, who wasn’t a bad mother, just a somewhat distracted one at times.

‘Oh, no.’ Quickly I rifled through my bag, upending it onto the seat in a frantic glut of rubbish.

It wasn’t there.

‘Oh, bloody hell.’

What a fool.

Ruby

I craved the sound of the sea, the drag and pull of the tide turning on shingle. I wanted to feel the wind in the trees, blasting the moors of my childhood. Something, anything, in nature, something bigger than me, to soothe my fearful, troubled mind.

Instead, I took Mrs Goodrich’s fat little dog Wilbur to the park over the road and sat on a bench with a sad inscription I couldn’t bear to read, inhaling bus fumes and waiting for Ali’s call from the station.

I’d limped through the day at the shop, expecting every customer – and there were, at least, a few – to burst in and accuse me of the worst parenting ever; of raising a monster. No one mentioned it though.

No one else knew – yet.

But Zach had come out of his room earlier, utterly distraught.

‘They called me a rapist,’ was all he’d say, flinging the phone at me, brilliant spots of colour in both his cheeks.

I’d glanced down at the screen, seeing a Facebook thread before he’d snatched it from me again, slamming into the bathroom and locking the door.

‘Who did?’ I’d said through the door, feeling sick myself. ‘Who said that?’