Halle went from engaging and connected, to detached and reserved, and I can’t pinpoint why.

After putting Arty to bed and tucking in Ivy, promising her that Halle would be the one to read her a bedtime story another time, I walk back into the living room to find the girl waiting there for me is nothing like the one I left less than thirty minutes before.

“Can I get you a drink?” I ask when I walk into the room and find her staring quietly at the family pictures that Nate and Liv have displayed on a sideboard.

“No, I’m okay, thanks. In fact, I think I should probably go. Get an early night. I have a gig tomorrow.”

“It’s only just gone eight o’clock,” I state in confusion, not fully understanding why she’s suddenly become so aloof.

“Yeah, well, it’s hard to keep your body clock on an even keel with the hours I work. Although I only do one shift in the bar now, because my singing pays more, I still have trouble settling into a typical sleep routine.”

She says all this but never once meets my eyes, and it has me feeling like she’s avoiding the contact to make leaving here easier. She feels she needs to go, but a part of her doesn’t want to go at all.

“I can understand that. I was hoping to finally get you to myself for a little while seeing as Ivy hogged your attention for most of the day. She’s really taken to you, you know.”

She turns back to the photographs and skims her gaze over the images before saying, “And I think she’s pretty special too, it’s just that…”

I take a few steps forward and come to stand at her side.

“It’s just?”

I follow her line of sight and see that her attention locked on a family group shot. All of us are here, at the opening night of Nate’s club. All of us, including Laura.

“She looks like her mum.”

“She’s the image of her,” I admit, finding it difficult to reconcile standing here with Halle, a woman I want to touch so badly, while we look at the still frame of my smiling wife, who I’ll never touch again.

“You were about to say something,” I press, not wanting her to clam up and leave before telling me what’s on her mind.

She twists the silver daisy bangle on her wrist, and then runs her hand nervously over her thigh before becoming completely still.

“It’s just that I don’t know how to be a good role model for a little girl like Ivy. I sat there with you tonight, and it dawned on me that I haven’t got a clue what a child needs.”

I laugh lightly before admitting, “Neither have I, so I hope that’s not what has you worried. I’m just winging it, Halle. I take every day, and every mistake I make, one by one, and hope and pray that I’m doing the right thing.”

“She reminds me of the little girl I was,” she admits quietly, her head dropping to look once again at the bangle she continues to fiddle with on her wrist.

“I didn’t have a mother, and I don’t say that because Ivy doesn’t have a mother,” she looks back at the photograph of Laura and clarifies, “I can see that Ivy has a mother that loved her very much.”

“What happened?” I ask gently.

She finally turns to look at me, and I see the utter devastation my question has caused.

“I’m sorry, that was insensitive of me, and you don’t need to answer that.” I step towards her and cup her face in my palms. My little fingers reach around to her nape, and my thumbs gently trace the apples of her cheeks. I watch as she swallows down her hurt, and blinks back the wetness threatening to fall from her eyes.

“No, I need to tell you, but not like this, not with you looking at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?” I all but whisper, my gaze flicking between her deep brown eyes and her full pink lips.

Even quieter than I, and with no more than a sigh, she replies, “Like I could become a part of your world.”

“It’s too late for that, you already are,” I confess without pause, taking the last step forward to remove the distance between our bodies and, without taking my eyes from hers, I press my lips against one corner of her mouth, and then the other.

“Tell me everything, and I will listen,” I whisper across her skin. “Tell me nothing, and I will wait.”

I resume with my softly placed kisses until our mouths are flush, and with a final, lingering, butterfly kiss to her bottom lip - which elicits a soft sigh to escape her mouth - I continue. “Tell me all that you want to share, because I want the good, the bad and the ugly, with you. Don’t hold back. Let me carry the burden you hide inside. I’m strong enough now, I promise.”

Her eyelids flutter closed, she takes a deep, steadying breath and when she reopens them, I see the decision in her eyes.

“Can we sit down?”

I take a step back, place my hand in hers and lead her towards the large sofa. With our connection unbroken, she sits carefully by my side and allows me to keep her hand in mine.

“I’ve always been alone,” she begins, her eyes finding and holding mine.

“I was eighteen when I discovered why I didn’t have a family. I’d spent my entire childhood in the foster system, moving from family to family and sometimes from county to county, changing schools like other kids changed shoes.”

“Was there no option of adoption for you?”

I should let her speak, but I don’t understand why - when there are so many families out there like Nate and Liv who are struggling to conceive - kids get left in the foster system.

She shrugs sadly and breaks eye contact.

“I don’t know why that never happened for me, but it didn’t, and before you think anything awful happened to me while I was in care, it didn’t. Yeah, there was some bullying in school because I was the foster kid and didn’t have the top brands or the latest trends, but nothing awful happened. That was just part of being a kid.”

“Didn’t you bond with any of your foster families?”

She shakes her head softly and replies, “My area was rife with abandoned kids, or kids that got taken into care for whatever reason, so the foster system was filled with ‘career carers’ rather than families looking to bring a child into their lives long-term. I was just a job for most of them, an extra few pounds in their pay every month.”

“And your mum or dad? Or grandparents? Did you ever find out anything about them?”

When her face turns to look back at mine, her eyes are wet with unshed tears, and unimaginable pain shimmers in their brown depths.

“I got handed my case files when I turned eighteen and was no longer in the system. My mum’s name was Leona Richards. She was in her mid-twenties when she had me and was more or less living on the streets. Her previous prolonged drug use only heightened her mental health problems.”

She takes a deep, fortifying breath and continues with her story.

“When they allowed her to take me out of the hospital a couple of days after I was born, having set us up in a half-way house for mother and babies, they missed her severe post-natal depression. A week after I was born, she took me to a local petrol station, told the guy behind the counter we had broken down and run out of petrol, and he took pity on her and allowed her to fill an empty, four-pint plastic milk carton with fuel for free.”

She squeezes my hand and looks at me again with devastation etched on her face.

“I dream about her sometimes. I imagine that she looks like me, and I dream about the flames and the heat and the burning.”

I knew whatever she was locking inside was painful, I never realised just how hard it would be to hear her share it.

“It’s okay,” I comfort as her first tear falls. “You don’t need to continue if it’s too hard.”

“No,” she croaks, followed by a more resolute, “No, I need to do this. I’ve never told anyone about my past, and I want the only person I share it with to be you.”

I brush away the wetness from her cheeks and wait for her to continue.

“She took me to a secluded spot in nearby woodland. Placed me on the ground against a tree trunk, and then poured the four pints of petrol all over herself. No one knows why, they only assumed she was suffering from delusions that can accompany some extreme types of post-natal depression.”

“Who found you? Who kept you safe?”

“A dog walker saw the smoke and heard me crying. My mother was already dead, but I was nowhere near the fire. She made sure, even in her turmoil, to set me far enough away from where she chose to end her life.”

“I’m so sorry you found out all this from a report. I’m sorry no one was there with you to help you through it.”

She chuckles darkly, shaking her head in a motion that’s gone from heartbreak to anger.

“I thought I’d found someone to help me through it. His name was Ian. He was respectable, a few years older than me and he promised me the world.”

My fists clench instinctively. I know whatever this prick Ian did, I’ll want to beat the fuck out of him for it, and I’ve never raised a fist in my life.

“He was charming, smothered me in affection, which was something I’d never had before, and I ate it up like I was starving. By the time I’d moved in with him, his affection had turned into control. He’d have friends over and tell me to dress in skimpy outfits. He said it was, ‘to show them what belongs to me and they’ll never have’. If I didn’t, he’d get angry and shove me around a little. He’d tell me I was worthless, and then he’d disappear for a few days and leave me without money, often without food. I was reliant on him for everything, so he literally held my life in his hands.”

“How did you leave him?”

She laughs mirthlessly, “I didn’t. He left me.”

Tugging her hand free of my hold, she wipes off the memory of my touch and stands. When she walks over to the sideboard of framed photographs, I get up and follow her.

“I’m glad he couldn’t see what was right before his eyes, I’m glad you’re here, with me.”

Her shoulders slump and she turns to face me. We are merely an arm’s length away, but the distance feels like miles.

“Don’t you see? I was so desperate to hold onto the scraps of affection he fed me, that even after he tried to force me to have sex with his friends and business associates, it was still him that left me. He abandoned me here, on this island, without a penny to my name, and if it weren’t for your brother, Liam, I would have been easy pickings for someone much worse than Ian.”

She pivots on her feet, grabs the family photograph in which I have my arms around Laura and thrusts it at me.

“Don’t you see, Josh. I’ll never be able to hold a candle to the woman you loved. I was abandoned by my mother, and used by the first man to show me affection. I’m fucking worthless. Damaged goods. While you-” she smiles sadly at me “-you’ve not only survived the worst pain imaginable, you also never once let it stop you from becoming an amazing father. You’re too good for someone like me, Josh.”

She couldn’t be more wrong.

“The woman I see before me isn’t worthless,” I begin, not moving, not wanting to distract from my words with my touch, despite craving to connect with her.

“She’s talented, resilient, funny, clever, and so fucking beautiful she steals my breath.”

Unable to hold back anymore, I stand before her and open my heart.

“You think I’m so perfect. I’m not Halle. When Arthur was born, I couldn’t bear to look at him, didn’t want to touch or hold him and only forced myself to do so to feed him so he would stop crying.”

The admission is painful. The confession of a sin I will never, ever forgive myself for committing.

“It was months before I could look at him and not feel hate. I know that’s a strong word and a horrible emotion to feel towards a small baby, but he was here, and Laura wasn’t. In my grief, I thought that if he’d never been conceived, she wouldn’t have chosen to risk her life. Ivy would still have her mother, and I’d still have my wife.”

Her tears resume in earnest, rolling over her cheeks and dripping from her chin. I don’t want to upset her further, don’t want to cause her any more pain, but she needs to know that nobody is perfect.

“Please don’t put me on a pedestal, Halle. The man I was when I got here was bad enough, but he was only a small part of the person I’d become. I hate how I treated my family, my baby-” I reach out and cup my hand behind her neck, pulling her towards me gently “-you. So, if you take anything from my words, know that perfection is overrated. You’re the amazing woman before me now, with more passion, heart and soul than anyone I’ve ever known not because of the pain you’ve endured, but in spite of it.”

Her trembling hands reach out to tug me closer to her, her chin finds my shoulder and the remainder of her tears soak into the fabric of my shirt.

“If I asked you to take me to bed, would you?”

I know why she’s asking, she thinks she’s damaged goods, and that there’s no way I could ever want her now. She’s wrong. I want her just as much as I always have. No, that’s wrong. After the day we’ve spent together and the way she’s embraced my children, I want her more.

“I’ll take you to bed,” I whisper across the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder. “But I won’t take advantage of you again. The next time I’m inside you, it won’t be to exercise any ghosts or demons.”

I kiss behind her ear, and she shivers.

“The next time I’m inside you, it’ll just be you and me.”