A cloud scuds across the moon, briefly leaving the room in thick, inky darkness and for that one moment I am relieved, before the sharp pincers of fear grasp me tightly. I don’t want to see clearly but the dark, this thick, velvet cover of obscurity is disorientating, and my heart beats a frantic tattoo of alarm against my ribcage. I don’t want to do this, I’ve changed my mind, are the panic-driven words that flutter across my mind before I push them away. I tried to find an alternative, I tell myself, but there isn’t one. There is only this. A tangy taste lies in the back of my throat, something filled with iron filings, sharp and metallic. Fear, maybe, if fear had a taste. I strain my ears, listening hard, the fight or flight urge keeping me on the balls of my feet, as that persistent thud batters against my temples, a drum being beaten in the back of my skull. It’s not too late, a voice whispers in the back of my mind. Oh, but it is, I reply silently. I have no choice. The only way to be safe is to finish this. As if he knows, the baby lets out a squawk, a shrill, brief shout.

A door slams somewhere far away and my heart rate accelerates, my breath sticking in my throat as that cold, chilled feeling sweeps over me again, leaving me covered in a clammy sweat. There is no more time. This is it. Quickly, quickly before it is too late.

Chapter Twenty-One

I wake briefly as a door slams somewhere distant, but the lure of the deep, embracing slumber I have fallen into pulls me back in and when I finally awaken properly the sun is streaming in through a gap in the curtains, the room hot and stuffy.

Silence. I sit up, peering into the cot only to find it empty. The first stirrings of panic flicker in my gut but my phone screen lights up with the buzz of an incoming message from Rav.

You were exhausted, so I took Mina to school and dropped Leo off at Mum’s. We need to talk tonight.