Veronica’s mind shifted suddenly again, this time to the daydream she sometimes still had, where she scooped the girl up in her arms and carried her away. Was it this girl in particular who she wanted to save, Veronica wondered, or was it any child she could lift up in her arms and claim? As though reading her thoughts, Jasmine reached upwards with a series of grunts in a clear desire to be lifted. Lifted away? Veronica lifted her. Terry’s child.

The girl was warm and softly rounded. She manoeuvred herself around Veronica’s waist like a clinging koala and Veronica responded, her arms cradling the girl’s back, the stance of it instinctive and natural.

What was she doing?

As Jasmine nuzzled closer, Veronica felt her arms begin to tremble. What the hell was she doing? If Terry found her holding his daughter like this, she didn’t know what might happen. The thuds that had once reverberated through their bedroom wall now began to echo like a pulse around her head – thud, thud, thud, thud. Get out, they warned her, a beating, wartime drum. Put the girl down. Leave the boy. Get out. Get out. Get out. But she felt stuck, as though somebody was clamping her thigh to a bed, or muzzling her mouth. Jasmine burrowed gently into her neck, and Veronica found herself kissing the top of her head as she had seen Dominic do earlier. Somewhere in the back of her mind she considered that she barely knew this child, and not only was it strange for her to be holding her this way, but it was strange, too, for the girl to give such affection to a person she didn’t know. Yet the girl was snug, and yearning, and Veronica could not put her down.

Dominic arrived back in the room carrying a shoebox of disordered medical supplies. Seeing the two of them in embrace, he strode forwards, and with an almost accusatory stare, held out the shoebox to Veronica. “What are you doing?” He lifted Jasmine away, but the girl lurched forwards, clinging in protest to Veronica’s hair. Her brother untangled her quickly, skilfully, and levered her down his body onto the floor where he gave her a biscuit to quieten her.

“Sorry,” said Veronica, still feeling the weight of the toddler, and the accusation. “She wanted to be picked up. You two are close, aren’t you?”

Dominic shrugged.

“I see you’re very protective of her. That’s lovely.”

“I can’t protect anyone,” muttered Dominic, and Veronica immediately raised her eyebrows.

“What do you mean?”

But now he only shrugged again.

Veronica looked into the box. An insufficient offering of plasters and bandages fought for space with unmarked pills and copious bottles of medicine, and an open pregnancy test, one of two sticks remaining.

“There’re bandages in there,” said Dominic.

Veronica nodded. “Yes, I see them.” She smiled at him, but as she did so she noticed that Dominic’s eyes were no longer on her. Instead they had moved to the door, static in watchfulness, his pupils wide and apprehensive. Had he heard something? At once, her stomach contracted again. Had he heard someone? Get out. Breaking off from her rummaging, she strained, as she imagined Dominic was straining, to hear movement on the stairs. She listened intently, as he did. She stared with him at the flaking wood. But there was nothing, and after a minute or so, she saw the tension slowly release from his body. Now he smiled, a forced, awkward expression and Veronica felt her heart lurch. Over the past few minutes she had been thinking only of the precariousness of her own situation in the flat, but what would Terry do to Dominic if he found her here with him? What must it be like for Dominic, she wondered, to live all the time with such trepidation? He was only a child. In a patchwork way, she remembered being a child too.