Cover

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of my dear dad.

Thank you for always being there for us.

We miss you.

Cofion annwylaf.

Caru mawr

xxx

Epigraph

‘What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets’

André Malraux

Prologue

Avoncote, 1964

The writhing baby lay on the hearth rug, its cheeks puce, the screaming intensifying as its scrawny limbs flailed aimlessly.

‘We’ll let him cry it out for a bit,’ she’d said weakly. She looked exhausted. She always did these days. ‘He’s been fed and winded, and I’ve changed him. Does their lungs good anyway, a nice long yell. There’s nothing really wrong with him; I think he’s just overtired.’

His eyes swept the room disapprovingly. Things were in disarray. He hated mess; there was comfort in order. It always used to be orderly. He could hear her now, humming to herself absently as she moved about the kitchen. He glared down at the mewling infant with contempt. Wriggling there open-mouthed on the ground. The tongue quivering in its screwed-up little face reminded him of a maggot crawling through a withered windfall apple. The sight of its hands, the bud of an extra digit trembling at each extremity, made him curl his own into fists of revulsion.

How he had come to despise this pink, bald parasite. Usually clamped to her breast, the thing was like a leech, sucking the life from her, demanding all her time and attention. As he leaned over the child, the sour, sickly smell of her milk rose from its breath. It turned his stomach.

The constant high-pitched wailing was becoming intolerable, seeming to fill his whole head, competing with the shrill whistle from the kettle that was now building to a crescendo.

‘Shut up,’ he hissed, in a low voice. But the incessant din appeared only to amplify. His mouth was close to its ear now. ‘Shut UP!’

She reappeared from the kitchen. He stood up and backed away guiltily. Maybe it was because she was so tired, but she appeared oblivious to his rage.

Letting out a sigh, she squatted down and scooped the now hysterical baby up into her arms. ‘I think I’ll walk him up and down outside a bit. Maybe the fresh air will help him drop off. He must be exhausted, poor lamb.’

He looked on silently as she wrapped the bawling infant in a shawl and, crooning all the while, disappeared into the garden.

The room was mercifully quiet once more. His breathing began to calm and he sat down on the sofa, watching through the window as they went down the path and past the omnipresent line of white towelling nappies flapping in the breeze. The movement seemed to have soothed the child and it had stopped sobbing. But he knew it would happen again. She had spoiled it; that’s what happened when you let a baby get its own way.