Except I was fit. Fitter than him.

I flipped myself over, grabbing frantically for anything.

‘Not again!’ I panted. I had him round his shins, holding on for dear life as he rained blows on my head. I couldn’t duck, but I pulled on his legs until he lost his balance and began to topple, like a tree.

He fell awkwardly, heavily, on top of me.

‘Not today!’ I whispered hoarsely at him, but with a groan, he started to push himself up—

Then I heard another voice. ‘Get the fuck off her.’

Looming in the dusk.

He did. I rolled away and spat out blood and earth.

The figure offered a hand: I took it.

Nearby, the snuffling of the felled giant, pushing himself up again.

Fee fie fo fum…

‘If you step anywhere near her again, or me – I’ll kill you.’

The man in the moon, come to save me. Sent by my mother.

Or perhaps it was just a street light, flickering behind his head.

I stepped, blinking, out of the gate, after the other man, onto the moonlit pavement.

Ruby

My hands shaking on the phone, I rushed back up to the flat and rang Rocky, who was working a shift at his dad’s fish and chip shop. I heard him cover the receiver to ask permission: laughter, a burst of Greek, a family living and working together.

Rocky arrived soon after, looking worried.

‘Swear to me you won’t leave until I’m back?’ I begged.

‘I swear, Mrs March.’ He blinked. He was a kind boy, if not the sharpest tool in the box, maybe, and he adored Zach. He was loved by his own family; he was uncomplicated. ‘I won’t leave my guy, I promise. He’s my mate. My—’ He rubbed his forearm self-consciously. ‘My best mate.’

I gave him a fiver anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Except, would we ever be on the safe side again?

‘Text me or call me, Rocky, if Zach so much as moves, OK?’

Ali had left a message when I was talking to Rocky: delayed by a signal failure in Kent, she was at least an hour from London.

I had enough time to see what they had to say at the vicarage: like it or not.

Paul and Pat’s house smelt of casserole and wet nappies – and something that reminded me of childhood.

Frankincense, perhaps, I thought, sniffing the air as I followed Paul into the kitchen: Sundays with the Catholics and my grandma at St Anne’s in Keighley.

The unhappy O’Hara women, laced up too tight. Everything I’d run from when I left Yorkshire. I felt rather queasy.

Sitting in the messy front room, I prayed (which seemed apt, given the surroundings) for no more bad news, or that Pat wasn’t about to whip out a bosom to feed four-year-old Martha, as had been known in the past.

To my relief though, she took the younger children into the next room to watch television, leaving Paul staring earnestly at me over mugs of green tea. Such was my anxiety, I could barely manage a weak smile.