Anna rushed from Leicester Square up along Long Acre – the excitement of being in the West End for her never waned. It was on days like this that she wished Jordan were closer, knowing he would love to be walking the pavements of Theatreland, staring at the posters, offering a critique of actors he didn’t know and looking up in awe at the bright lights, murmuring, ‘One day...’ under determined breath.

‘I miss you, Goldpie,’ she whispered into the grey mist of the London morning.

Only last week she had mailed him a picture of their new puppy Griff, part Alsatian, part goodness knows what, chosen from a dozen upturned, expectant snouts pressed eagerly to the viewing windows at the dog rehoming centre.

Theo had bent down in the corridor to admire a spaniel with an appealing bound and an eager little muzzle that was almost smiling. Anna had laughed, watching her man fall in love with the little creatures who needed a home, knowing that to pick one would be a hard task. She figured it was the pretty spaniel that would be coming home with them, but then she turned and saw Griff. Unlike the other dogs, who seemed to understand that they needed to preen and look as appealing as possible, he just lay there with his long brindle snout on his big paws and one ear turned down. When he did deign to look in her direction, his eyebrows lifted at the inner corners, his mouth drooped and his expression was one of pure sorrow.

‘Oh! Oh, look at you!’ She fell to her knees and placed her hand on the glass of Griff’s enclosure. She’d seen that face a dozen times during her stay at Mead House, she knew how it felt to have given up hope, one of life’s rejects. Like the dented tins left last on the shelf, the ones no one really wanted because they didn’t know or care what wonderful things might be contained within.

‘Hello! Hello, my darling,’ she cooed.

‘He’s had a bit of a rotten start, young Griff.’ The kennel supervisor spoke with resignation. ‘He’s a bit of a loner and has trust issues. Sure, he’s a bit rough around the edges, but he’s the type of dog that will thrive if loved enough.’

‘I can do that!’ she had offered forcefully and without hesitation. ‘I can love him enough!’

Theo had stood and reached for her hand, which he squeezed in support. ‘Yes, you can.’

The nights she spent lying on the kitchen floor with their new resident, stroking his flank and explaining that there was no need to be afraid, he could stop shaking, no one here was going to hurt him, ever, were starting to pay off. Griff had lost his tremble and had twice now crept close to where she sat on the sofa, pushing his nose onto her calf. This had made her happier than she could describe. Theo had been right: it had helped take her mind off the tension between them, tension that hadn’t really gone away since their Maldives trip the previous month.

She eagerly awaited Jordan’s response, knowing it would be blunt and humorous, but also that he would understand the absolute joy she found in a dog like Griff.

Turning sharp left, Anna picked up the pace until she reached the little café in Drury Lane. Lisa was already in situ and had commandeered a booth.

‘Sorry I’m late, my train was delayed. Nightmare!’

‘More like you couldn’t leave that doggy! You are obsessed, woman.’ Lisa smiled, having been regaled with tales of Griff during an excited late-night phone call.

‘I am!’ Anna admitted. ‘Completely.’

‘How many times did you go back and reassure him you were only going out for a while and not to worry?’

Anna threw her head back and laughed loudly at the accuracy of her half-sister’s words. ‘More than five, less than ten.’

Lisa rolled her eyes.

Anna looked around the café. ‘Where’s Kaylee?’

‘Well, yes, lovely to see you too!’ Lisa tutted. ‘You can’t even hide your disappointment at it being just me!’

Anna laughed. ‘Sorry, it is lovely to see you, I was just expecting to see the little munchkin.’

‘Micky drove us up and he’s taken her to see the street entertainers in Covent Garden. We’ve got about half an hour, I’d say, before being an uncle out and about in town loses its novelty and becomes a chore.’

‘Oh, she’ll like that.’ Anna didn’t want to waste time talking about Micky, who could still only treat her with contempt. The discord sat between her and Lisa like an unpleasant, sharp thing, which they largely dodged around and rarely mentioned. ‘Give her this from me.’ She placed a navy paper Gap bag on the laminate tabletop and smiled.

‘You shouldn’t have! She’s a lucky girl. Thank you, Anna. She loves her clothes.’

‘My pleasure. I like looking at all the little outfits, so much cool stuff!’

Lisa peeked inside the bag at the pink sweatshirt and the packet of rainbow-striped socks.

‘You sounded keen to meet up, everything okay?’ Anna’s thoughts had spun with all that Lisa might be wanting to say, none of it positive.

‘Yes, everything’s good. I just wanted to tell you something.’ Lisa pushed the bag away and clasped her knuckles on the tabletop, as if this required no less than her full attention.

Anna sat forward on the banquette, keen to hear.

Lisa took a deep breath and dipped her chin. ‘I remember the day we met, when you came to the house—’

‘I think we all remember that day.’

‘You said you wished you knew what had gone on between your mum and my dad. Our dad,’ Lisa corrected. ‘You wanted to know if it was a quick, irrelevant thing, a fling, and you thought that maybe he’d only written to you because he felt guilty or because his time was running out.’

‘Yes. I do remember my mum saying she loved him and that maybe if things had been different, you know, different timing...’ She felt her blush rise, mirrored by Lisa’s own. This was, despite their mutual affection, still a less than comfortable topic. ‘But that might have just been my mum’s take on things. Her wish, if you like. I mean, I was little and so she was always going to sugar-coat things.’

‘I know how that works.’ Lisa sighed, referring to her own rather complex relationship with Kaylee’s dad.

‘What can I get you, love?’ The slender waiter in his black waistcoat interrupted them, holding his little grey notepad in the air, his pen poised.

‘Just a cup of tea, please.’ Anna smiled.

‘One cup of tea,’ he repeated as he jotted this down. ‘And for your sister?’ He looked at Lisa and both women beamed, delighted that the connection was obvious to the outside world.

‘Same, please.’ Lisa drew breath and waited for him to turn on his heel before continuing. ‘Well, two things. Firstly, I remembered something that I wanted to share with you. When I was little, no more than four or five, I’d say, I was sitting on the sofa with Dad when my mum came storming into the room and she was mad as hell. Her face was scarlet. She was holding a T-shirt, a pale pink T-shirt with capped sleeves. She shoved it into my dad’s face and said, “What’s this?” He shrugged and didn’t say anything, but I saw him sit up straight, paying good attention but trying not to, if you can imagine.’

Anna nodded. She could imagine.

‘And then my mum kind of... well, I don’t know how else to put it, apart from to say that she kind of growled!’

‘Growled?’ Anna tried to picture such a thing.

‘Yes, it was horrible. I was really scared. I can still picture her pulling at the fabric with all her might, stretching it thin, gripping it in her hands with her elbows sticking out and baring her teeth until it ripped. And then she really went to town, shredding it and yanking off pieces and flinging them to the floor. And then she calmed a little and was out of breath, and she turned to Dad and said, “It’s bad enough you would chuck me over for another bloody woman, but don’t you dare bring anything of hers into this house. Don’t you dare!” And then she walked out and slammed the door.’

‘God, that’s awful.’ Anna felt a spike of unease on behalf of Sally, who must have been hurting, and also for her half-sister, who had witnessed this very grown-up exchange.

‘But it’s what happened after she left the room that affected me the most and that’s what I wanted to share with you.’ Lisa ran her tongue over her lips. ‘It was almost like I wasn’t there. Dad slipped off the sofa and scurried about on the floor, gathering up the bits of pink T-shirt and holding them to his chest like they were something precious. It was this that struck me more than anything else. Not my mum going nuts, but the look on Dad’s face as he scrabbled about, squeezing the scraps of cotton in his hands as if they were bits of dough that he might be able to put back together. And he looked...’ She paused and stared at Anna. ‘He looked completely broken, distraught.’

‘That’s so sad.’ Anna conjured a picture of the man she had never known performing this desperate, demeaning act in front of his young daughter.

‘Here we go, ladies. Two teas.’ The waiter placed a cup and saucer in front of each of them and left sharply. The café was filling up and he was busy.

Lisa sat up straight and reached into her handbag. ‘Anyway, the point of that story is this: I’d forgotten about it, put it to the back of my mind, until...’ She flipped what was clearly a photograph back and forth between her thumb and forefinger. ‘This is the reason I remembered the whole thing and I think it answers your question about whether it was anything more than a quick fling for Dad.’

Lisa slid the glossy Polaroid snap over the tabletop and there was her mum staring back at her! Anna felt her tears pool. She had precious few pictures of her mum and to see her face, young, smiling and so full of life was a real gift.

‘Oh, Lisa!’ she managed, before reaching for one of the scratchy white napkins that sat in a natty plastic dispenser at the end of the table.

‘I found it in one of his books that he kept in his bedside cabinet. I’m no great reader and it nearly went to the charity shop, but for some reason I decided to flick through it. And there this was, nestling inside it. And look what she’s wearing.’ Lisa pointed.

Anna wiped her eyes and scrutinised the photo again. Karen Cole was sitting on a bed, a hospital bed, wearing a pink cap-sleeved T-shirt, and next to her sat a youthful, smiling Michael Harper, her dad. They were sitting squashed up against each other, with every possible part of their bodies in contact, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, heads inclined, touching. They looked happy, deliriously happy. Their joined arms formed a rough heart shape in front of them and there, resting half on her dad’s forearm and half on her mum’s was Anna, a tiny baby, swaddled in a white crocheted blanket.

The three of us. My parents. My family! This was the moment he told me about in his letter. This was when he held us both in his arms!

‘The moment I saw this picture I remembered the T-shirt incident and so in answer to your question, I would say your mum, and you, for that matter, meant a whole lot to him. More than a whole lot.’

Anna cursed the tears that she blotted into the napkin. ‘I can’t tell you how lovely it is for me to see this.’

‘Keep it, of course. It’s yours.’ Lisa smiled. ‘He was my dad and I loved him and I hated how he hurt my mum, for all her faults, but he was your dad too and I don’t doubt for a second that he loved you and your mum very much. And being kept apart from you must have been so hard.’

Anna nodded at this truth. ‘What...’ She sniffed and blew her nose. ‘What was the book?’

‘Ah, thought you might ask.’ Lisa reached again into her bag and pulled out a pale green, cloth-covered edition of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

‘Of course it was.’ Anna smiled and ran the tip of her finger over the face of the man in the photo. My dad, my daddy.

Having kissed her half-sister goodbye and with the book safely inside her bag, Anna raced back along Long Acre until she found a cab and jumped in.

‘Barnes, please,’ she managed through noisy tears.

‘You okay, love?’ the cabbie asked.

Anna nodded at him in the mirror.

‘We’ll have you home in no time. As I say to my little girl, there’s nothing in the world that warrants lots of tears, nothing at all.’ He gave a small chuckle.

She pictured a little girl at home waiting for her dad who was a black cab driver and her tears fell even harder. Anna took the book from her bag and placed it on her lap, taking comfort from the feel of it beneath her fingers. She looked out of the window as London rushed by.

*

She had made supper and was now pacing the kitchen, checking on the steak-and-ale pie in the oven and stirring the mash occasionally to keep it soft and warm. She filled the small watering can that lived under the sink and watered her potted lemon tree. Its stem was thickening and had even sprouted woody arms with dark, glossy leaves, but it was still to bear fruit.

‘One day, Griff, we shall pick lemons for our summer drinks from this little plant. Just you wait and see.’ She smiled at her puppy, who ignored her. This in itself was progress.

‘Come on, Theo.’ She wiped her hands on the dishcloth. It had been quite a day and she wanted nothing more than to tell her husband all about it. For the umpteenth time she opened the cover of the book and picked up the photograph, holding it up to the window, studying every aspect of the image that had only been in her possession for a few hours but had already been committed to memory, right down to the tiniest detail. She stared at the lick of dark hair across her dad’s forehead, hair that she and Lisa had most definitely inherited. Her mum looked so young and beautiful, holding her tenderly and with an expression on her face that spoke of so much promise.

‘Nine years...’ Anna shook her head. It seemed unbelievable that this healthy-looking young woman in her prime was only to have nine more measly years on the planet. ‘I wonder what you would have done differently if you’d known?’ she asked the laughing face with eyes not dissimilar to her own. ‘Probably nothing.’

Finally she heard his key in the front door. ‘Come on, Griff, he’s home!’ She patted her thigh and raced into the hallway, to be greeted by a decidedly dishevelled husband.

‘Theo!’ She reached up and held him tight.

‘What’s up?’ He looked at her with alarm.

‘I’ve had a crazy day.’

‘Crazy good or bad?’

‘Good! Look at this.’ Without waiting for him to settle home, she handed him the picture, cradling the book to her chest.

Theo pulled his head back to focus better.

‘It’s my mum and dad and me. Can you believe it? The only photograph of us all together, as far as I know, taken on the day I was born. Look how happy they are, look at my mum! She looks so young.’

He scrutinised the image and took his time replying. ‘You look like both of them. I can see your facial shape in your father and you have your mother’s smile and her eyes, undoubtedly.’

It was the perfect response. She loved that he was as interested in the picture as she was. ‘I am so happy to have it, and guess what?’

He shook his head and shrugged, handing her back the photograph and slipping out of his suit jacket, which he hung on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.

‘He’d hidden the picture in this.’ She held the book out on straightened arms. ‘The Jungle Book. He kept it by the side of his bed and as soon as Lisa mentioned it, I remembered that I’d had a copy too. Mine had a green cloth jacket just like this and my mum used to read bits of it to me. I just know he gave it to me. My mum used to get upset reading it and I could never understand why. But now it all makes sense.’ She rushed forward and kissed him on the mouth with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. ‘Don’t you think it’s wonderful?’

‘If that’s the reaction I’m going to get, then yes, I think it’s wonderful.’ He laughed. ‘What happened to your copy?’

‘I don’t know.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t know where any of my stuff went, not that I had anything of value, just little bits and bobs and a few books, toys and whatnot. I know Joe sold lots of our things to get drugs.’ She saw him flinch at this casual reminder of their very different worlds. ‘And when I went to stay with my aunt and uncle, I suppose the landlord must have cleared out the flat. Can’t blame him. It seems a shame, now I’m older, but at the time I didn’t give it a second thought.’

‘That’s really sad.’ He kissed her hair.

‘I suppose it is. I am so, so happy to have this – you have no idea.’ She again cradled the precious talisman to her chest. ‘And I made supper.’ She turned around, heading for the kitchen.

‘A welcome hug and supper? It’s my lucky night, which is good because today’s been anything but lucky.’ He grabbed a beer from the fridge and twisted the cap with his fingers. ‘It’s been bloody awful.’

She noted the tension in his back, the way he looked up to the ceiling and sighed, as if digesting bad news. It concerned her, but not as much as his furtive air. ‘Why so awful?’ Anna pulled the pie from the bottom oven and carried it to the table ready for serving.

Theo sat in his preferred chair and loosened his tie, petting Griff’s snout with his free hand. ‘Oh, Dad not listening to a very sound business proposal. It makes me so mad how dismissive he is. I just want to do something good with all this money that’s sloshing around, you know? Use it to try and make a difference.’

‘I know you do, honey.’ They had had this conversation a thousand times and she was right behind him. She loved him all the more because of his social conscience and the way he never acted as if he was entitled to what he had. Theo was adamant that he should use his privileged position to try and do something positive for those less fortunate than himself, but his dad was categorically against this. It was a running battle between them.

‘I’ve had this idea to renovate this old warehouse in Bristol into studios. It’s perfect, red brick and beautiful. And it would be just right as a sort of halfway house for young adults coming out of care. Like when you came out of Mead House and needed somewhere to go.’ He glanced up at her and she nodded back, full of love for him and his big heart. ‘I’ve worked it all out. They could live there while they find their feet. I’ve had a chat with a woman from Bristol council and she said it was just the sort of venture they’d be interested in supporting. And it’s not as if we won’t get our money back – it’ll just take a bit longer than with some of our other projects. That part of Bristol is ripe for development and once it’s renovated, the place will be a massive asset for the company. It’s a win-win. But no, he isn’t interested. No doubt if it was anyone else coming up with the suggestion, he’d leap on it.’

‘It sounds like a wonderful idea. My friend Shania would have loved the chance to go somewhere like that. You remember – the friend I told you about?’

‘Yes, I remember of course.’ He shook off his jacket. ‘I was thinking of her, actually. And you.’

Anna’s tears pooled at the memory of her last sighting of Shania, homeless and using. She sniffed. ‘Having somewhere to go might have stopped her from... losing it. It breaks my heart, thinking of her out there somewhere. Such a different life to the one I wanted for her.’

‘If only wishing was all it took.’ He walked over, ran his thumb over her cheek and kissed her lightly, before making his way to the table.

‘Yep, if only.’

‘I just wish my dad wasn’t so predictable. It’s like he’s constantly trying to goad me. Plus he’s hired this girl at work and she’s...’

Anna held the dishcloth in her hand and paused, disliking the squeeze of discomfort in her chest, before going to fetch the mash from the stove top. ‘She’s what?’ she asked softly, taking in his expression, the reddening of his cheek, the glaze to his eyes.

‘She’s...’ Theo filled his cheeks and exhaled, exasperated. He banged his beer bottle onto the tabletop. ‘I don’t know how to describe her apart from bloody annoying!’

She took her time at the Aga, collecting herself. Call it sixth sense, call it intuition, but there was something in the way that this girl bothered him that bothered her.

Don’t be silly, Anna, she’s a girl and he is home, home with you and today is a wonderful, wonderful day...

*

With supper finished and the dishes abandoned in the sink, the two sat on the deep sofa, staring at the fire that crackled in the hearth. As ever, it held them captive. The smoky scents and the pop and hiss of logs evoked an outdoorsy life Anna had never known, but it still made her think of forests, soil, seeds and fecundity.

Theo leant back into the soft cushions with his eyes closed and his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. ‘I can feel you smiling next to me.’ He spoke warmly.

‘I can’t help it! I keep thinking about my lovely photograph and that book. Oh, Theo, that book – I love that his hands have touched it and that it obviously meant something to him.’ She curled her legs up beneath her and snuggled closer to her husband, resting her head on his shoulder.

Theo gave a low, slow hum. She recognised this as his pre-doze state, when to speak felt like too much effort.

‘I feel sad for my parents. I could never say this to Lisa, obviously, but it’s awful, isn’t it? They both knew they’d met the love of their life, but they couldn’t do anything about it because Dad was already committed and didn’t have a way of escaping without causing hurt and damage to a whole group of people.’

‘Going from what Lisa told you about the T-shirt ripping, I’d say some damage had already been done.’ He yawned.

Anna nodded. ‘Yep, I think that’s true. But what rotten bloody luck. They say you can’t help who you fall in love with. And I can’t help but think how different my life would have been if they’d been able to stay together. Losing my mum would have been just as crap, obviously, but at least I’d have had my dad. And maybe he would have been able to help Joe too... It’s made me wonder, Theo, what things were like for the baby your dad fathered, for Alexander. I hope he’s having a good life...’

Theo patted her thigh with a hand that grew increasingly heavy.

‘Did you hear me, Theo?’

‘I did, but I literally can’t think about that right now.’

She watched his eyes close, as if he was willing her words to stop.

‘And it makes me think, Theo, what wouldn’t my mum have given to be in my position, with a man she loves and in a beautiful home? What wouldn’t Shania give to have all the opportunities that we have?’ She inhaled and briefly closed her eyes too, drawing courage to speak the words that were waiting in her mouth, bumping against her teeth and sneaking around her gums, trying to find the courage to leap out. ‘My mum was brave, she had a baby in the most difficult circumstances. No money, no partner, no support, but it didn’t stop her, Theo.’

‘Oh please, Anna.’ He sat up, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Not this again.’

‘Yes.’ She twisted sideways to face him on the sofa. ‘This again. What did you think, that it’s just going to go away? Because it isn’t. I see how much you love coming home to Griff and it makes me think about you becoming a dad and my biggest fear is that I am running out of time!’ She cursed the desperate tone to her voice. ‘I don’t want to run out of time.’ She repeated, more softly now, the admission painful.

‘I can’t keep up. One minute you tell me I am enough, that we are enough, and I feel things have settled, but then you jump right back to this.’

She heard the sharp edge of irritation in his words, slashing the cosy, happy, post-supper feeling that had wrapped around them like a warm blanket only seconds before. Griff, as if disturbed by the change of mood, stood and walked to his basket in the kitchen.

‘I can’t help it. I guess it’s because I can’t believe...’ She paused, rethinking her phrasing. ‘Or, more accurately, my heart and mind can’t accept that what you’re saying is final. I hope, pray that you will have this lightbulb moment when your doubts and worries disappear so that we can just go for it.’

Theo leant forward with his elbows resting on his knees, now fully awake, his words spoken over his shoulder, no doubt easier without having to see her expression. ‘I can only keep repeating the facts to you and hope, no pray, that they resonate, because I have to tell you that I am beyond weary of this discussion. It is exhausting and damaging and it drives tiny wedges between us that I fear will be harder to remove than we might think.’

‘Don’t say that! Please don’t say that! I love you!’ She placed her hand on his back and saw him nod. Her heart raced.

‘And I love you too, but every time we go back to square one, I wonder if it’s enough.’

There was a moment or two of silence, each allowing the enormity of his words to permeate.

‘I just wish I understood—’

‘All right, Anna!’ He jumped up from the sofa. ‘I will try and make you understand.’

She shrank back against the seat cushions with a flutter of fear in her chest, unaccustomed to him using this tone.

‘I spent night after night in a gloomy, cold school, wishing I was someone else, somewhere else. My life was hell. I was ripped apart each and every day. Bullied mercilessly by those fucking idiots. I was exhausted, afraid and lonely. I didn’t have a refuge—’

She opened her mouth to speak. He held up a palm, cutting her short.

‘And before you say another word, I know it was similar for you. But I don’t know how to be a dad. There’s stuff you don’t know about—’

‘What do you mean, “stuff I don’t know about”?’

‘I don’t know!’ he countered nonsensically. ‘But I do know I can’t bear the idea of a child of mine going through what I went through. I just can’t! And my parents would insist that any child of mine went to Vaizey, a family tradition—’

‘That’s nuts. We can send them to any school we choose!’

‘God, you just don’t get it, do you? It’s not that simple. I work for the company, they own a chunk of our house, they own our car, it’s just how it is – we’re tied to them.’ He was shouting now. ‘Vaizey College is part of that. And we can laugh about being weird, outsiders even, and it’s all well and good for us now, but it was a bloody difficult path to get here, torturous, and I cannot in all conscience, in fact, I won’t, allow a child to walk that path. If it wasn’t for Mr Porter, well, I hate to think, but there were times when I tried to think of a way out, and if I could have walked to a high bridge or a cliff edge—’

‘Theo, no! Please don’t say that. Please don’t!’ She placed her hands over her ears, couldn’t bear to hear what might come next. Instantly picturing the moment Joe left the house for the last time.

‘Oh God, Anna.’ Theo sank down onto the sofa edge and pulled her hands from the sides of her head, holding them in his own. ‘I forgot. That was insensitive of me. I’m sorry, but I’m only telling you the truth. There were some dark, dark times for me.’

She felt the emotion coming through his shaking arms like a current.

‘But what if our children don’t suffer as you did, what if they have a lovely, happy life, guided by us? What if they go to a local school because they are our kids and we insist on it? What if they go through life as I did for my first nine years, knowing nothing but love and happiness? It was only my mum dying that changed my life, because up until that point it was a good life, a wonderful life!’ Her voice faltered. ‘Why can’t it be like that for our children? Why can’t we think of it like that? Instead of the worst-case scenario, let’s think of the best.’

‘I don’t think you hear me, Anna. I don’t think you hear what I say.’ He released her arms and sat back down next to her.

Both stared at the fire. The ensuing silence calmed them. She mentally regrouped and when she finally spoke, she did so calmly, without the tension that had laced her words earlier. She noted that her husband responded differently. Gone was his visceral rejection of all she said. Instead, he sat with his head tilted and his expression neutral.

‘I do hear you, Theo. I do. And I think the most important thing right now is that we keep talking.’

‘Okay.’

These two syllables meant more to her than he could have imagined. ‘I know that what you went through has clouded your view of the world and that is a shame because we all have choices. I was only nine, and a young nine at that. And I remember sitting in the school corridor and I felt like everyone that walked past knew what had happened and was stealing glances at me. Maybe they did or maybe that was my imagination. It’s hard to know. Everything about that time is foggy, as if I was looking at the world through a dirty lens. And even though I was broken, I held the image of my mum’s smiling face in my mind and she kept repeating, “It’s okay, Anna Bee, you are going to be okay.” I even nodded occasionally to show the mum in my mind that I had understood, even though I didn’t believe it. I thought I was never going to be okay ever again.’

She looked up, happy that he was listening intently to her. It gave her the confidence to continue. ‘I had only known a world of clean sheets, warm blankets, Saturday markets, Sunday fry-ups, hot sunny afternoons, homemade cakes, letters to Father Christmas, hard leather school shoes that you had to break in, gym knickers, bedtime stories, Easter eggs that we gobbled up on the spot, simple birthday parties where we sat under a sheet in the front room eating sandwiches, dancing to the radio, summer day trips to the sea, sweets once a week and a brother who farted on the bus to make me laugh.’

Theo gave a soft snort of laughter. She smiled at him.

‘That was my life. Everything about me was average – build, height, looks, intelligence, the lot. There was nothing about me to make anyone look twice, unless you were my mum – she looked at me, looked at both me and Joe, as if we had just floated down from heaven. And the point is, every little experience built a small piece of armour that helped me to survive when things went wrong. And things did go wrong, Theo. Badly wrong. My life changed in ways so huge that my mind couldn’t think about it. But everything I had experienced taught me that happy was possible! And that’s the magic. I never ever stopped looking for it and then I found you.’

She looked up, shocked to realise that he was crying. He never cried.

‘But that’s just it, Anna Bee. What if you’ve got no model for being a good dad, no experience of it at all? What if all you’ve got to pass on is this feeling of dread and misery and wondering every day whether you’re doing the wrong thing?’

Anna stared at her husband, but try as she might, she couldn’t find the words that would placate them both. Instead, she leant forward and held him close, letting him cry.

*

With Theo upstairs taking a pre-bedtime shower, Anna stacked the dishwasher and let Griff out for his night-time wee. ‘Good boy, darling.’ She smoothed his head lovingly. Switching off the main light, she took joy from the subdued glow of the lamp, much easier on her tired eyes and appropriate she felt for the late hour. She reached into the kitchen drawer and retrieved her notebook and pen. Then she walked slowly to the table and pulled out a chair. It was with a heavy heart that she began to write.

Fifi and Fox,

Here it is.

She paused, feeling a twinge in her chest, sadness manifested, before taking a breath and continuing.

I have never been so close to giving up on my dream of you.

Never.

I sit here at the kitchen table, writing with tears trickling down my face at these words. It’s a hard thing for me to write, and an even harder thing to imagine. But, like always, I have to try and carry on, find the good, because there is one thing I know with absolute certainty and it’s this – if I give in to the deep, cold sadness that lurks inside me, if I submit to the lonely longing for the people who have left me and the things I can’t have, then the darkness will take hold. It will fill me right up and it will drown me.

I can’t let that happen. Because while I am here there is always hope. Know, my darlings, that life is worth living. Life is worth living! It’s up to us what shape that life takes. I had reason more than most to let my life crush me, but I didn’t let it. I fought against it. And I will keep fighting – fighting to find the happy in this good, lucky life I have made, this life I share with Theo.

I will keep positive. I won’t give up. I won’t.

Anna

(I hardly dare write Mummy – it feels a lot like tempting fate.)

She pushed the pad and pen away from her, becoming aware of an echo in her mind. In an instant she was quite overcome by a dizziness that made the room spin. With her palms pressed flat on the tabletop, she straightened up, before placing her hand on her forehead, which felt a little clammy. She took deep breaths and loosened the neck of her jersey.

Anna heard a whisper coming from the doorway.

She turned slowly towards the noise.

Squinting now, as surely her eyes must be deceiving her, she placed her hand over her mouth and stared, shocked, surprised and delighted to see her mum, Karen Cole, standing there with her arms outstretched.

There was a second before she found her voice. ‘Oh my God!’

Anna felt nothing but a rush of love for the woman she had missed so much. It was beyond wonderful to see her. She cocked her head to one side to listen to the words her mum was whispering from a smiling mouth, both of them overwhelmed by the joy of their reunion.

She placed her hand at her chest and took a sharp breath as she stood.

‘Mummy! My mummy... I’ve missed you! All my life I’ve missed you! It never got easier, never.’ She pointed towards the open window. ‘Look! Look at the garden!’ As she turned her head towards the window, she noticed the lemon tree sitting on the windowsill, each branch sagging under the weight of several bright, ripe fruits. She smiled. ‘Oh! How beautiful!’

Her mum walked forward and gently took her daughter into her arms, wrapping her in a warm hug that soothed her bones and covered her with a blanket of peace.

‘Anna...

‘Bee...

‘Come with me...

‘Darling girl.’

As realisation dawned, Anna felt the swell of panic.

‘Oh no! No, Mum, I’m not ready. Not ready at all. This can’t be my time! No!’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to leave Theo! I love him, Mum! Please!’

Karen Cole placed her hands on either side of her child’s head and whispered, ‘It will all be okay. Everything will be okay.’

Anna had no choice but to trust her. She felt her body yield in submission, and as she stumbled backwards she took one last look at her beloved Griff.

Falling to the floor, she heard Theo speaking, his tone urgent, but his words were muffled. She felt him gently push the blue tea towel from the Aga under her head.

‘Anna!’

She was aware of the note of hysteria to his yell, the last thing she heard before being enveloped in darkness.