There was a sudden breath of wind that shifted the branches above me and I wondered what you would have said if you had been there, whether you would have teased me or got cross or said something encouraging, or just put your arms around me and said nothing. Then I told you about the strange things that had happened, the disappearing evidence. I know what you would have said about that. You always wanted to know how things worked. When you didn’t know, you found out. Even once when we had been to the Hampstead fair, you had got into conversation with a sinister tattooed man who ran one of the merry-go-rounds and he had shown you the gears and the machinery underneath. And as I told you all that I realized I had to know, even if I died at the moment I knew. It didn’t matter, as long as I knew, as long as I could tell you.

I looked up at the branches. Yes, they really were standing out more sharply against the graying sky.

Chapter Thirty-One

I sat on the sofa in Fergus’s living room. Jemma had left the house for the first time since Ruby’s birth to go a few hundred yards down the road for a cup of coffee with a friend, but leaving enough instructions for a week’s absence, and I had come around with croissants and freshly squeezed orange juice for Fergus. There were Babygros over the radiators, congratulation cards and flowers on every surface, and a buggy in the corner. Ruby’s Moses basket lay at my feet, with its downy snuggle of crocheted blankets, but I held Ruby on my lap, her soft head on the crook of my arm, her little bag of body slumped against me. Her eyes were closed and her lips puffed slightly with each sleeping breath she took. I needed to look at her puckered old-woman’s face, smell her musky breath, feel how her hand gripped my middle finger firmly, as if she knew she could trust me.

We had talked about broken nights, miniature nails, eye color, stork marks, the shape of her nose, the shell of her ear and upturn of her nose.

“Who does she look like?” asked Fergus.

“Not you,” I said, staring at her features. “But she’s got Jemma’s nose and mouth.”

“Everyone says that.”

“Maybe your chin,” I said doubtfully, because he seemed to want me to spot a resemblance.

“No. She’s got Jemma’s father’s chin,” he said.

I smiled at him: dear Fergus, Greg’s best friend, father of my goddaughter. “This was what I needed,” I said.

“Are you all right, Ellie? You seem—I don’t know—very thoughtful. A bit subdued.”