‘I saved you dinner,’ he said, nodding at a casserole dish on the hob. The way he said it, you’d think he’d just presented her with a diamond ring.

‘I’m not hungry.’ She worried that sounded rude, so she pulled the lid off the dish and made a big show of stirring it. ‘Smells delicious, maybe I’ll have some later. Is that what you wanted to tell me?’

‘You first,’ he said. ‘Tell me about your day.’

‘It was kind of boring, really.’ Put on the spot, she didn’t want to discuss it. ‘Wait, I’ve ordered a Tesco delivery for tomorrow afternoon, are you…’

‘Am I what?’

She was going to ask whether he’d be home, but knew he was hardly likely to be anywhere else.

‘Never mind. Mum and Dad are coming tomorrow night, and Connie. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I stupidly invited them all a while back. I could really do without it right now.’

‘Then cancel it,’ he said.

‘They’ll just turn up anyway. You know Mum, once she puts something in her diary, nothing short of Armageddon will stop it happening.’ Something occurred to her. ‘Where are the kids?’

‘Denny is at a mate’s round the corner.’

‘When’s he back?’ she asked in alarm. She’d recently had one child snatched by a maniac, and despite the fact that she knew it was as likely to happen again as an asteroid landing on their house, she felt her anxiety spike. ‘He can’t come back on his—’

‘I told him to ring me and I’d walk him home,’ Kev told her.

She looked at what he was wearing. ‘In your pyjamas?’

‘It’ll be dark by then,’ he said with a shrug. ‘So, listen—’

She wanted all her ducks in a row before they changed the subject. ‘And where’s Angel?’

‘Angel’s here,’ said her daughter, coming into the kitchen. She was wearing a pink onesie and a pair of enormous slippers in the shape of cuddly dogs. The soles slapped on the kitchen tile.

‘Hello, darling,’ said Sasha. ‘How was your—’

‘I’d like to talk to you both,’ Angel told them tensely, and she pulled out a couple of stools from under the kitchen island and patted them, as if to say, Sit.

Sasha and Kev glanced at each other. They had no idea what Angel wanted to say. Getting her to communicate about anything these days was a struggle, so this situation was totally unprecedented. They both knew the trauma of her abduction would affect her for years. If anything, the experience had made her even more sullen, secretive and unpredictable. More than once when Sasha had picked Angel up from the houses of friends, she suspected her daughter had been drinking, or smoking weed.

The way her daughter pointed gravely to the stools made Sasha nervous, but she did as she was told and sat. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘And you too, Dad, please,’ Angel told Kev, and he sat beside his wife.

Sasha said uneasily, ‘What is it, darling?’