AMANDA BROOKE
The Bad Mother

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Amanda Valentine 2017

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photograph © Lyn Randle / Trevillion Images

Amanda Valentine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008219154

Ebook Edition © December 2017 ISBN: 9780008219161

Version 2017-11-03

Dedication

For Jessica and Nathan

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Amanda Brooke

About the Publisher

Prologue

Coils of copper hair fly across her face, and when she pulls them from her damp cheeks, it feels like ice-cold fingers stroking her skin. She takes a step into the darkness and her foot snags on a tree root threaded through the craggy ledge – or is it another skeletal hand impatient for her fall?

Far below, the night is punctured by a thousand lights that splutter and die where land touches the sea. She’s too far away to detect the salty air washing in from Liverpool Bay, or the urban mix of exhaust fumes and takeaways that remind her of home, but that’s where her thoughts lead her. She follows the dark path of the Mersey and her gaze settles on the sprawling city. She doesn’t dare imagine the pain she is about to inflict on her family.

You can do this, she tells herself.

You have to do this, comes a stronger voice from within. It’s a voice she had all but forgotten since carving her name next to Adam’s on this desolate sandstone ledge. Life had been so full of promise back then. There were a few frayed edges perhaps, but nothing that couldn’t be mended with the love of a good and patient man, or so she had thought. She had realized too late that she had been unravelling and now she was completely undone.

Buffeted by another gust of wind, her summer dress billows out like a parachute and if she dared lean over the precipice, she might see the heavy boughs reaching up, promising to catch her when she falls. They won’t have long to wait.

In the light of a torch, her wedding ring shimmers and unwelcome doubts assail her. If there was another way, she would find it, but even as she tries, her mind spins. The queasy sensation is a familiar one and she knows if she’s not careful, she will lose sight of the path she must take.

‘Lucy.’

Adam’s voice rises above the howling wind as if he has the power to still the night. She knows he will blame himself for this, but there will be enough people to support him after the loss of his beloved wife. She blocks out his voice as she prepares to make the leap, but there’s another voice that cannot be ignored. What mother could fail to respond to the sound of her baby’s cries?

She feels the softness of her daughter’s skin on her lips.

‘Hush,’ she whispers. ‘Mummy’s here.’

1
Six Months Earlier

‘This is a bad idea,’ Christine said as she stood by the garage door watching her daughter battle her way through what amounted to three decades of detritus. ‘Please, come out of there.’

‘I’m fine,’ Lucy said, stepping over the last fingers of light on the concrete floor to immerse herself in the shadows.

Her hip brushed against a sun lounger that hadn’t seen a summer since the noughties when she and her school friends had lazed about in the garden while her mum was at work. They had knocked back blackcurrant alcopops as if they were Ribena, hence the dark vomit stain in the middle of the sagging canvas and the reason it hadn’t been used since.

‘It’s probably not even in there, love.’

‘Judging by how much other junk you’ve kept hold of, I don’t see why not,’ Lucy countered. ‘And I’m sure I remember it being at the back somewhere.’

‘Will you tell her?’ Christine said, turning to the man standing next to her.

Adam stood with his arms folded and his tall, lean frame silhouetted against the cold light of a crisp winter’s morning. When he spoke, the warmth of his words appeared as vaporous swirls above the halo of his dirty blond hair. ‘Your mum has a point. I should be the one in there.’

‘Firstly,’ Lucy said, ‘I know what I’m looking for, and secondly, you’re terrified of spiders.’ She had stopped forcing her way through the junk to face her husband. Sweeping back a coil of copper hair, her emerald-green eyes flashed in defiance and she told herself she would stand her ground even if Adam insisted. To her relief, he didn’t.

‘I tried,’ he said to Christine with a shrug.

Wrapping her Afghan shawl tightly around her shoulders, Christine muttered something under her breath that was unrepeatable. She appeared tiny next to Adam’s six-foot frame, but Lucy’s mum was stronger than she looked. She had brought up her daughter single-handedly since Lucy was eight years old and although the last twenty years hadn’t been easy, what should have broken them had made them stronger and they made a good partnership. They were best friends when they wanted to be, and mother and daughter when it was needed. At that precise moment, Christine’s maternal instincts had kicked in and she wanted to protect her only child.

‘I’ll be careful,’ Lucy called out.

Taking another step into the past, she sized up the gap between an old bedstead and a dressing table. Where once she might have slipped her slender figure through with ease, now she paused to stroke a hand over the slight but firm rise of her belly; her mum wasn’t alone in having a child to protect. Raising herself on to tiptoes, Lucy stretched her long legs so that her bump skimmed the surface of the dresser as she passed.

‘Don’t go wedging yourself in or we’ll never get you out,’ Christine called, before adding, ‘Tell her, Adam.’

‘Don’t forget you’re fat,’ he said, laughing all the more when Lucy scowled.

Christine swiped at her son-in-law. ‘You can’t call a pregnant woman fat, not ever,’ she said, her smile softening the hard stare she was giving him over the rim of her spectacles.

Her mum’s glasses were her only nod to older age. Her spikey dark locks showed no sign of the grey her hairdresser artfully disguised, and her skin glowed from a strict beauty regime. Lucy hoped she would look as good in her fifties, but she had inherited her pale complexion and ginger genes from her dad, so there was no knowing how she would age.

Wiping the dust from her white shirt, Lucy attempted to work out her next move while fearing it was time to admit defeat. Even if she did manage to find what she was looking for, there was no way she would be able to reclaim it without emptying the entire garage. Her mum and dad had moved into their semi-detached house in Liverpool when they had married some thirty years ago, and that was probably the last time anyone had seen the back wall.

Wilfully ignoring her doubts and doubters, Lucy continued on her quest. As she squeezed past a pink metallic bicycle with torn and tattered tassels hanging from its handlebars, it began to move and she put out her hand to stop it from rolling. From the shadows, the orange reflector on the rear wheel shone out like a beacon, drawing her back in time.

She could see her dad kneeling in front of the upturned bike repairing a puncture. He had turned the pedal with his hand so fast that the wheel had become a blur and the reflector transformed into a glowing orange circle. Lucy recalled how her stomach had lurched when the spokes had turned so fast that it looked as if the wheel had magically changed direction. The memory alone made her queasy and threatened to resurrect the morning sickness she hadn’t quite left behind in her first trimester.

‘Can you see anything?’ Adam called.

Lucy had gone as far back as she could reach without taking unnecessary risks. ‘Not yet,’ she said as she peered into the gloom, searching for the faintest suggestion of white painted spindles. It was there somewhere and she wouldn’t leave until she had settled her mind.

‘Seriously, Lucy,’ Adam said. ‘Your mum’s right. It probably isn’t there and if you go any deeper, you don’t know what’s going to fall on top of you. Come out. You’re scaring us.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ she said, not daring to look back. ‘Please, give me one more minute.’

As Lucy swiped at ancient cobwebs covered in dust, a particularly heavy clump clung to her fingers. Shaking it free, she glimpsed the carcass of a giant spider caught by its own web and let out a yelp.

‘Fetch her out, Adam,’ Christine ordered, panic rising in her voice.

There was the creak of furniture being moved and when Lucy turned, she found Adam standing on the other side of the dresser. He had buttoned up his checked shirt to protect his T-shirt and could probably squeeze through the gap at a push but the sight of the dead spider dangling from Lucy’s index finger stopped him in his tracks.

‘Not funny,’ he said.

At thirty-six, Adam was eight years older, but in that moment, he could so easily have been a sulky younger brother. She could still win this argument.

‘Don’t come any nearer,’ she warned.

‘I know why you’re doing this,’ he said, without returning the smile she offered. ‘If you say it’s there, I believe you. And truthfully, do we really want a battered old cot that would probably fail every modern-day health and safety test?’

‘It’s not any old cot, it’s my cot and I’m twenty-eight not fifty-eight. They had health and safety in the nineties too.’

Shaking the dead spider free, Lucy took one last look at the remaining junk. There were boxes piled on top of each other in a leaning tower of decayed cardboard. If Adam were to challenge her, she could describe the contents of each one. They contained her dad’s life, from the manila files kept from the advertising business he ran with his brother, to his sketchpads, his worn-out slippers, and his second-best suit. His best suit had been burnt along with his remains and the picture an eight-year-old Lucy had drawn of him teaching the angels to paint as he had once taught her.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Adam said. ‘None of this matters.’

Lucy pulled her gaze from the boxes and was about to retrace her steps when something caught her eye. ‘There it is, look!’

The cot had been dismantled and she could see only the two side sections. The wooden spindles were spaced a couple of inches apart and, as Adam had predicted, the wood was splintered and the paint chipped. It wasn’t much of a family heirloom and although her dad had been a gifted artist, the rabbits and squirrels she recalled on the headboard were factory transfers. Her mum was pretty sure they had bought it from Argos.

When Lucy turned, Adam had his lips pursed tightly. She knew what he was thinking and although she wanted to feel vindicated, what she actually felt was foolish. ‘OK, you’re right. I don’t want our baby in some out-of-date deathtrap, and I certainly don’t want to get buried beneath an avalanche of boxes.’

When Adam continued to offer his silent judgement, it was her mum who broke the tension. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I’m freezing out here. Are you leaving it there, or what?’

Lucy reached out for Adam to take her hand but to her horror, he leant backwards. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped, but then followed his gaze and realized how stupid she had been to think, even for a moment, that he was rejecting her. She wiped her hand on her shirt to leave a trail of sticky cobwebs before waggling her fingers. ‘Look, no spiders.’

Adam held her hand as they slipped past the trinkets from her childhood, travelling through her teenage years and towards the most recent additions. There were the stacks of polythene-wrapped canvases she had accumulated at art college, not to mention the camping equipment that had survived several music festivals. A thick layer of dried mud covered the tent she had brought home from Leeds and, with hindsight, it would have been simpler to abandon it, but eighteen months ago she had been unaware that her free and single festival-going days were about to come to an end.

‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ Christine said after returning to the house.

They were huddled in the small galley kitchen that felt cosy rather than cramped, or at least it did to Lucy. Adam had his shoulders hunched, unable to relax in the space that had been exclusive to Lucy and her mum until he had stolen her away.

‘Not a complete waste,’ he said, giving Lucy a wry smile that was warm enough to chase away the chill that had crept into her bones during her ill-conceived search.

With cheekbones a little too sharp and a chin not sharp enough, Adam wasn’t classically handsome, but it had been his pale blue eyes that had captivated Lucy when she had first spied him over the smouldering embers of a barbecue two summers ago. He had looked at her as if he could read her thoughts and then, as now, whatever he saw amused him.

‘Go on, say it,’ he told her.

Lucy pouted. ‘I knew it was there.’

‘And I believed you,’ replied Adam.

‘I could have sworn I’d given it away,’ Christine muttered as she opened the oven door. A cloud of steam rose up to greet her and the smell of rosemary and roasted lamb filled the kitchen. ‘But what was so important about finding it anyway? You obviously didn’t want it.’

‘She was trying to prove a point.’

‘Ah, that’s our Lucy for you,’ Christine said, wiping the steam from her glasses as she crouched down to baste the roast potatoes. ‘I thought you would have worked that out by now, Adam. She likes to be right.’

‘Except when I’m wrong,’ Lucy said, dropping her gaze.

‘But you weren’t wrong,’ Christine said. The light from the oven underlined the confusion on her face as she turned to her daughter. ‘Is there something I’m missing?’

‘I’ve had a few … lapses lately, that’s all.’

Her mum closed the oven door and straightened up. ‘What do you mean, lapses?’

Lucy wasn’t sure how to describe them. They were silly mistakes that might pass unremarked if it were anyone else, but not Lucy. Her brain stored information like a computer and when information went in, it was locked away until it was needed, and she could retrieve it in an instant. She had known precisely where the cot was and she had been proven right. ‘They’re memory lapses, I suppose. I get confused for no reason at all,’ she offered.

Adam cleared his throat. ‘We were late this morning because she couldn’t find her car keys and her car was parked in front of mine so I was blocked in. I found the spare set, but you know what she’s like …’

‘I always leave them on the shelf in the kitchen, or sometimes in my coat pocket, but they weren’t in any of the obvious places,’ Lucy explained. She scrunched up her freckled nose when she added, ‘They were in the fridge beneath a bag of lettuce. I must have kept hold of them when I unloaded the shopping yesterday.’

A bemused smile had formed on Christine’s lips. ‘Welcome to my world,’ she said. ‘I almost put a loaf in the washing machine the other week.’

In no mood to be appeased, Lucy felt the first stirrings of annoyance, not liking that her mum should take the matter so lightly. ‘And do you find things in the wrong place when you have no recollection of moving them?’

Christine took a step nearer until she was close enough to lift Lucy’s chin. ‘No, but I live on my own.’

‘And I work from home, alone. I’m talking about when Adam’s at work.’

‘Have you mentioned it to the midwife?’ Christine asked, looking to Adam.

‘I wanted to raise it at our hospital appointment last week,’ he said, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘But I was overruled.’

Confusion clouded Lucy’s expression and she was grateful that no one was looking at her. She would like to think that she had laid down the law, but Adam was mistaken if he imagined she had been the one to decide against voicing her concerns. It was true that she had been reluctant, but it was Adam who had convinced her that her blunders would be laughed off. So far, he alone knew how unsettling the episodes had become.

‘You still should have mentioned it, Adam,’ Christine said, her smile persisting.

‘I’m glad I didn’t now,’ Lucy grumbled. ‘It was my twenty-week scan and we got to see all her little fingers and toes and I didn’t want to spoil the moment. This memory thing is separate anyway.’

‘Oh, honey, I’m sorry – it’s anything but. They even have a name for it,’ Christine said as she cupped her daughter’s face in the palm of her hand as if she were still her little girl. Her thumb brushed against Lucy’s cheek to encourage a smile that wouldn’t come. ‘It was called baby brain in my day. Though I can’t say I mislaid things, I definitely became a tad scattier. It’s your hormones, that’s all, and I’m afraid it’s only going to get worse. Just wait until you add childbirth and sleepless nights to the mix.’

Lucy’s lip trembled. ‘Baby brain? Really?’

‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’

‘I was scared it was something else,’ Lucy said, holding her mum’s gaze long enough for her to realize at last how frightened she had been. Tears brimmed in her mum’s eyes as she too caught a glimpse of the lingering shadows of the past that had been haunting her daughter.

With a sniff, Christine kissed her daughter’s forehead. ‘You’ve had such a lot of change in the last year or so, it’s no wonder your mind’s playing catch-up. You shouldn’t keep your worries to yourself.’

‘I don’t,’ said Lucy as she pulled away from her mum to look at Adam, who had been waiting patiently to be noticed. Her husband had a habit of tapping his fingers in turn against his thumb whenever he felt out of his comfort zone, and he was doing it now. It was a reminder that beneath that blunt exterior was a man who had his own moments of vulnerability.

Christine wrinkled her nose. ‘I know you have each other but, no offence to Adam, he’s a man.’

‘None taken,’ Adam said. The finger tapping continued.

With her gaze fixed on her daughter, Christine said, ‘I was telling Hannah’s mum the other day how you two girls should make more time for each other now that you’re pregnant. She’s been through it enough times and it would be a shame to let your friendship drift.’

‘I saw her not that long ago,’ Lucy said as she attempted to gauge exactly how long it had been. It was after she had moved in with Adam but before they had scurried off to Greece to get married last summer. ‘It wasn’t long after she had the baby.’

‘He’ll be turning one soon,’ Christine said. ‘I know you both have busy lives, but it would do you good to have someone else to talk to. Don’t you think so, Adam?’

Before Adam could answer, Lucy said, ‘I do love Hannah, but don’t you think she’s a bit chaotic?’ An image of screaming kids and barking dogs came to mind when she added, ‘The boys were all over Adam last time we were there and he ended up spilling coffee all down his shirt.’

‘Lucy was convinced it was deliberate,’ Adam offered.

‘And you weren’t?’ asked Lucy, astonished that Adam should be smiling as if the memory had been a pleasant one. He had tried not to show his annoyance at the time but the atmosphere had turned thick, and Hannah hadn’t helped by making a joke of it, clearly used to such disasters. ‘You couldn’t wait to get out of there, and it was a wonder you didn’t get a speeding ticket on the way home.’

‘I don’t see how I could when it was you driving.’

‘No, it was def—’ she said, stopping herself when she saw the frown forming on Adam’s brow. She could have sworn he had taken the keys from her, but it was so long ago now, maybe she was thinking of a different time. ‘Was it me?’

Adam winced as he looked to Christine. ‘Can you have baby brain before you’re pregnant?’

‘That’s why I think she should talk to Hannah, and New Brighton isn’t that far from you,’ Christine persisted. ‘Apparently she’s another one who thinks you need a visa to get back across the Mersey when you move to the Wirral.’

Lucy didn’t need reminding that she hadn’t seen nearly enough of her family and friends of late, but she had been busy building a new life with Adam. He had to come first and, while she would willingly make the extra effort for her mum, she wasn’t sure if keeping in touch with Hannah was the right thing to do. Feeling slightly wrong-footed, she turned to Adam. ‘I don’t know, what do you think? I could always try to meet up with her without the kids around, and you wouldn’t have to come.’

‘It’s entirely up to you. If you’re sure it will help, of course you should.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said after some hesitation, to which Adam wrapped an arm around her and she relaxed into his shoulder. She heard him blow on her unruly locks, but if he had spotted a trailing cobweb he didn’t complain.

‘At the very least, speak to the midwife,’ Christine said. ‘I don’t mind taking the day off and tagging along with you for your next appointment.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ Lucy said, knowing that her mum had used up most of her leave on the wedding and a couple of other holidays abroad. ‘And I promise, I will mention it.’

‘Make sure you do,’ Christine said. ‘Honestly, Lucy, it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just a temporary blip.’

‘That’ll last the next eighteen years,’ joked Adam. In response to the look his mother-in-law shot him, he added, ‘Am I bad if I like the new Lucy Martin – version 2.1. with all its idiosyncrasies? It keeps me on my toes.’

‘So my daughter’s one of your computer programs now, is she?’ Christine asked. Her voice was soft but firm when she turned to her daughter and added, ‘It won’t be forever, love.’

Lucy was more inclined to agree with Adam’s prognosis, but she held her tongue and smiled, willing her mum to do the same. Adam didn’t always say the right thing, but there was no doubting his love and, more recently, his perseverance.

‘Why don’t you two go and relax while I crack on with lunch?’ Christine suggested. She had returned to the cooker to poke a fork into a bubbling pot of broccoli. ‘It won’t be long and afterwards you can show me the scan photos again. I think I’d like another look at her fingers and toes.’

Lucy heard a noise escape Adam’s throat that was a half laugh. ‘Is that what I said?’ she asked, already knowing that she had. Her shoulders sagged. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? We were hoping to keep it to ourselves for a while longer.’

‘In that case, I think I might be about to have a memory lapse of my own,’ her mum said, her expression fixed with an innocent smile. Lucy wasn’t convinced and justifiably so because as she turned to leave, Christine squeaked, ‘A granddaughter!’

2

Lucy listened to the wind howling through the eaves and was extremely grateful that she had avoided an uncomfortable commute to work through torrential rain, unlike poor Adam. Converting the loft into an art studio had been her husband’s idea and had been undertaken shortly after Lucy had moved into the house in West Kirby a year ago. She could have continued to rent studio space in Liverpool but Adam knew how she hated driving through the Kingsway tunnel and it was a journey she was happy to surrender. She liked that she could set to work whenever inspiration struck, although her artistic flare seemed to be misfiring of late.

Wrapping her hands around a mug of peppermint tea that was too hot to drink, Lucy inhaled the scented steam to ease her mind. It was late morning and she had yet to pick up a paintbrush, while Adam had probably fixed whatever system bug had caused him to rise at five thirty.

He had left for work hours before Lucy had crawled out of bed, and she had lounged in her PJs, eating porridge and watching morning TV for far longer than she intended. When she had dressed, she had forgone her usual uniform of paint-splattered crop pants and T-shirt for an oversized shirt to make room for the swell of her belly that grew by the day.

Setting down her drink on the workbench, Lucy tied back her hair with an old bandana and lifted the dust sheet covering her current work in progress. Her easel had been set up close to the Juliet balcony window to catch the natural light, but the storm had stolen the day and she wasted the next few minutes repositioning her work beneath one of the spotlights.

Taking a step back, she took time to consider her latest commission. It was a portrait of a dog called Ralph, or at least that was the plan. Since leaving college, Lucy had made a decent living painting portraits and most of her work came from either personal recommendation or online requests. She painted people as well as pets, but preferred animal fur to flesh because it suited her style. The last time she had painted a cocker spaniel, it had been one of her best ever portraits and she had been excited by the prospect of doing another.

What Lucy hadn’t realized from the initial enquiry was that Ralph was completely black except for the flash of white on his chest. The first photo her client had sent was impossible to work from, and even though Lucy now had a series of images pinned to the top of her easel, there was a chance that the end product would be no more than a silhouette set off by the spaniel’s sparkling – and admittedly adorable – eyes. The only aspect of the composition she was confident about tackling was the background. Her trademark was the inclusion of symbolic references, which in Ralph’s case was the window where he awaited his master’s return. There would also be a slipper caught beneath his paw with the toe torn to shreds.

Having sketched an outline and blocked out the basic contours of the dog’s head and body the day before, Lucy’s task for today was to add some much-needed texture. She picked up her palette and began adding her oil colours. She squeezed out a generous amount of titanium white, a dab of Prussian blue and, as an afterthought, some French ultramarine. There would be no black on the canvas until she was happy with the curve of the dog’s snout and the ripples of fur on his silken ears.

Picking up an unlabelled glass bottle, Lucy twisted the cap and squeezed the dropper to draw up the clear liquid that would thin the paints. She dribbled a few drops across her palette before selecting a wide flat brush and, as she mixed her colours, she couldn’t help but notice the smell of her paints had changed. She wondered if it might be the steam rising from her tea, or perhaps the metallic scent of the storm in the air – or was it simply that her perceptions were changing along with her body?

Adam had a point about her becoming a newer version of herself but, in the software industry, that implied an improvement to the old. In some ways, Lucy was changing for the better. She had clung on to her student days a little too long and it was time to accept that she was a proper grown-up with a husband and a baby on the way.

Taking a deep breath, Lucy began to add paint to the stretched canvas. She used curved brushstrokes to add texture, but the oils worked against her and after half an hour of trying and failing to add some depth to her painting, she put down her palette. With her brow furrowed, she picked up the bottle she had used to thin the paint and raised it to eye level. She made up her own thinner mixture from equal parts of linseed oil and turpentine but one sniff confirmed her suspicions. If there was any oil present at all, it was the remnants from a previous mix.

The rain was beating down on the roof hard enough to make the tiles quake and as the noise intensified, so did Lucy’s frustration. She poured the contents of the bottle on to a rag and used it to wipe clean her palette. She could have rescued the paints she had been using, but she would feel better starting over. She was almost tempted to cast aside the canvas too, but it was salvageable, assuming she did everything right next time.

Lucy took extra care as she half-filled the offending bottle with turpentine before adding the linseed oil. Such a simple task would normally be undertaken while she was planning her work, or thinking about what to have for lunch. It shouldn’t need her undivided attention and Lucy’s ineptitude annoyed her. And then it worried her. What if she made similar mistakes when the baby was born? Mixing incorrect ratios of thinner and oil was one thing, but what if she were making up formula milk? What if something went terribly wrong because of her carelessness?

The thought of being a mother terrified Lucy more than she had ever anticipated. She hoped her daughter would be blessed with health and happiness – nothing short of a perfect life – but for that, she would need the perfect mother. How could life be so perverse that part of preparing a woman’s body for motherhood should involve giving her an overdose of hormones to screw up her mind?

Shaking the bottle, Lucy attempted to release some of her tension. She was being overdramatic. It was a simple slip-up.

‘Bloody hormones,’ Lucy muttered.

Picking up her peppermint tea, Lucy studied the canvas. It wasn’t that bad and she wondered if she had been too quick to jump to conclusions about the thinner mix. With renewed determination, she picked up her paintbrush and this time used gentle strokes to transform her previous dabs of paint into a smooth wash that gave some sense of light and shadow to Ralph’s features. She felt calmer, and Adam chose the perfect time to call.

‘Hello,’ she said with a soft smile.

‘I can hardly hear you,’ Adam shouted. ‘Are you in your studio? Am I disturbing you?’

Lucy took another look at the canvas. ‘No, I’ll go downstairs,’ she yelled back as she dropped her brush in a jar of thinner so it wouldn’t dry out.

With her phone cradled against her shoulder, Lucy held her mug in one hand and used the other to grasp the handrail as she made her way down the staircase to the door on the first-floor landing. The entrance to her studio fitted seamlessly in with the rest of the house and Lucy reminded herself that she had reason to be proud of her accomplishments.

It had been hard graft, project-managing the building work and the wedding at the same time, but she had done it without so much as a mishap. Of the two, the wedding had been the simplest because she and Adam had chosen to marry on a beach in Santorini with only their mums in attendance. Adam’s boss had insisted on hosting a party for them on their return but it had been deliberately low-key because their budget had been tight. Adam had already invested all his money in the house, and most of Lucy’s savings – or at least the money her mum had saved up through the years on her behalf – had been earmarked for the loft conversion. They hadn’t wanted a big fuss anyway. They had each other and that was what marriage was all about as far as they were concerned.

Reaching the ground floor where the staircase split the house in two, Lucy said, ‘Can you hear me now?’

‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Do you need to make a drink?’

‘No, I’ve got one, but I might grab a biscuit unless you’re going to tell me I’m fat again,’ she said, turning right. Her bare feet slapped against the ice-cold porcelain tiles as she crossed the kitchen diner in search of sustenance. If she had been around when Adam had refitted the kitchen, she would have insisted on installing underfloor heating but at least the room itself was warm. In fact, it grew distinctly toasty as she passed the gas hob.

‘I would never call you fat and you know it,’ Adam said. ‘A bit bumpy around the middle maybe …’ He was expecting a retort but was met with silence. ‘Lucy?’

She was staring at a flickering blue circle. One of the burners had been left on its lowest setting. ‘Sorry, what?’ she asked as she quickly extinguished the flame.

‘Are you OK?’

Lucy considered whether or not to tell Adam. She certainly wasn’t going to mention the mix-up with the thinner because, the more she thought about it, the more likely it was that she had simply been doubting herself. Leaving the gas on, however, was irrefutably her fault. She had made breakfast hours ago and although she had eaten her porridge slouched in front of the TV, she had returned to the kitchen to wash up, and once more to make her peppermint tea. She had been distracted by the storm and her reluctance to set to work, but it was no excuse. Taking a sip of her tepid tea, she said. ‘I left a burner on.’

‘On the hob?’

‘It must have been when I made breakfast. Unless …’ she added as a thought occurred. ‘You didn’t use the hob this morning, did you?’

‘Did you see the gas lit when you made your porridge?’

‘There’s no need to snap. I only left it on for ten minutes.’

In the silence that followed, Lucy sensed Adam judging her and her anger began to build. She knew it wasn’t his fault but if he dared suggest she could have burnt the house down, or that the flame could have flickered out and sparked an explosion, there was a good chance she was going to scream.

‘Lucy,’ he said at last. ‘You have to be more careful.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

‘OK, sorry, forget about it,’ he said as kindly as he could, but Lucy took offence anyway.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she scoffed. ‘Forgetting is the one thing you can count on with me.’

No longer feeling hungry, Lucy left her mug on the counter and headed to the far end of the kitchen. The large patio doors looked out on to a simple courtyard with a scattering of pots and planters. Her eyes settled on the winter-bare fruit shrubs she had failed to nurture during the summer, which were now being bullied by gale-force winds.

West Kirby was on the exposed western tip of the Wirral, a peninsula pinched between the fingers of the Dee and Mersey estuaries, and there was little to stop the storm sweeping in from the Irish Sea. Lucy felt its force as a sheet of rain hit the patio doors, causing her to slump down on to a chair at the dining table.

‘I take it you slept in this morning?’ Adam asked with a yawn. He was taking Lucy’s snappishness in his stride and his patience was irritating.

‘Only ’til about eight,’ she said. It had been nearer nine, which still wasn’t bad for someone who had refused to rise before midday in her misspent youth.

‘I wish I could have stayed there with you, but then again, your fidgeting is getting worse. I hardly slept a wink last night.’

‘Is that why you got up so early?’ she asked as she trailed a finger across the surface of the table, leaving a faint mark in a layer of fine dust that had no right to be there.

Lucy hated the monotony of housework. She and Adam shared their duties but he was a little more particular and she felt guilty whenever he came home after a long day and picked up the chores she never seemed able to finish. She didn’t remember housework being this hard when she lived with her mum, but that was probably because her mum had done most of it.

Adam groaned and she imagined him stretching his spine. ‘I needed to make an early start anyway. I thought I’d cracked it with this new user interface but unless there’s some miracle breakthrough in the next few hours, I’ll have to go to Manchester tomorrow to work on site,’ he said, his tone giving away his disappointment and his lethargy. He worked for a software company thirty miles away in Daresbury and while he loved his job when it was going right, dealing with clients and their ever-changing needs was the bane of his life.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t keep you then,’ she said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. She wasn’t ready to make another attack on her painting and she sensed Adam was in no rush to get back to his modules and macros either.

‘Are you going to have another stab at Ralph?’

That’s what I was doing when you phoned,’ Lucy said as she pulled out a second chair to rest her feet. Arching her back, she unbuttoned her shirt to reveal her white lace briefs and the gentle rise of her stomach punctuated by a belly button that had recently popped out. ‘I’ve spent an hour getting nowhere when I would have been better off catching up on housework.’

‘But I thought you’d just had breakfast?’

Lucy went to open her mouth to correct him but she knew why he was confused. She had lied about how long she had left the gas on. ‘What is this, Adam? Since when did I need to report all my movements to you?’ she asked, knowing the answer was an obvious one.

‘How long did you leave the gas burning, Lucy?’ Adam asked, his gentle tone fuelling her anger.

As she hauled her legs off the chair to straighten up, Lucy’s feet thumped hard enough against the porcelain tiles to sting her heels. ‘I don’t know, an hour or two. Does it matter? Nothing happened.’

‘Thank goodness it didn’t, but why bother lying about it? If you could stop getting so wound up over these things, you’d relax more and maybe then you’d make fewer mistakes.’

‘I am relaxed!’ Lucy said as her finger drew sharp lines through the dust on the table to form two words in capital letters. There were a lot of ‘F’s.

When Adam didn’t respond, it was as if he could read what his wife had written. She hung her head in her hands and as she leant over the table, she felt a strange fluttering in her stomach – except it wasn’t in her stomach, but a spot lower down. It was the first time she had felt her baby move and for all Lucy knew, her daughter’s movements were signs of distress caused by her mother’s roiling emotions.

She wanted desperately to say something to Adam. Only the night before, he had splayed his hand across her stomach, impatient to feel a part of what had been exclusively her experiences of pregnancy so far. They needed to share this special moment together, but now was not the right time.

Taking a deep breath, Lucy reminded herself that none of this was Adam’s fault. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘It’s OK. Maybe I’m the one who needs to up my game. I could juggle my schedule and try to work from home more often.’

‘Except when you have to go to Manchester,’ she reminded him, proof that her short-term memory didn’t always misfire.

‘Isn’t it time you started to take things easy?’ he tried. ‘You could always stop taking commissions for a while. It’s not like you haven’t been slowing down already and I’m sure we could manage without your income.’

‘Painting isn’t simply a job, it’s my passion. I can’t not paint.’

‘Then paint for pleasure,’ Adam persisted as if he could solve her like one of his programs. ‘Let me worry about the bills. Please think about it, Lucy. Why don’t you go for a walk along the beach and clear your head?’

Glancing towards the tall beech tree in their neighbour’s garden swaying from side to side, she said, ‘Have you seen the weather?’

‘Then go somewhere indoors, go shopping.’

‘Maybe,’ she said as a means to halt Adam’s attempts to fix her. He meant well but if he threw one more suggestion at her, she was going to explode.

‘And when you do go out,’ Adam said, his voice rising as he sensed he was getting through to her, ‘make sure you turn everything off and lock up.’

Lucy’s lips cut a thin line across her face as she stared at the words written in the dust. She could feel them forming on her tongue and cut the call dead before they spilled out.

3

Lucy huddled against the corner of the large L-shaped sofa that took up most of the space in the living room. The black leather upholstery complemented the monotone colour scheme, as did the sixty-inch TV screen dominating one wall. With the exception of a couple of paintings Lucy had hung up to soften the sharp edges of Adam’s choice of décor, the entire house bore the hallmarks of a bachelor pad, although Lucy was grateful that no previous love had stamped her mark on the place before her.

There had been only one significant other in Adam’s life prior to Lucy, but Rosie had never moved in, which had been a lucky escape by all accounts. She had been a work colleague and had used Adam to rise up the career ladder by taking credit for his work and apportioning blame to everyone else when she messed up. Something had gone disastrously wrong and Adam had been forced to move jobs, but he had put his past mistakes behind him and Lucy was determined not to be the next.

Adam was different from the other men she had dated, and there had been quite a few. She had flitted from one casual affair to the next, avoiding commitment and responsibility as best she could. When Adam came along, the eight-year age difference had felt pronounced and she had been embarrassed by her immaturity. She had been a wild thing and he had tamed her, or so Adam told her. He was probably right, although Lucy was beginning to wonder if she had accepted the role of Adam’s wife under false pretences. She couldn’t be trusted to take care of herself or the house, and she didn’t know how she was going to look after a baby.

The transition might have been easier if she lived closer to her mum, but Lucy was getting used to life on the Wirral. She loved that it was a five-minute stroll to the beach, although that proposition had not been a tempting one today despite Adam’s helpful suggestion.

When she heard the front door opening, Lucy lifted her book higher to obscure her face. She hadn’t spoken to Adam since hanging up on him, nor had she replied to his text messages. He had apologized and she wished he hadn’t. She was the one acting like a child.

When the house fell silent, Lucy realized Adam had gone straight into the kitchen, confirmed a moment later when she heard the oven door slam. Adam had offered to pick up some food from Marks and Spencer on his way home and had asked her what she fancied. She wondered if he had responded to her radio silence by choosing his favourite cuisine, which was Chinese, or opting for hers. Her mouth watered at the thought of garlic dough balls; one of her many cravings in recent months.

Adam was head chef and they didn’t often resort to ready meals but she presumed he had thought his time would be better spent shoring up his wife’s fragile ego while keeping a safe distance from the offending gas hob. As the seconds ticked by, however, Lucy began to fear that he didn’t want to speak to her at all. She put down her book and tucked her knees as close to her chin as her bump would allow.

Rather than return to her studio after the argument, Lucy had spent the afternoon soaking in the bath and feeling sorry for herself. She had taken time on her make-up, which was perfectly understated, and had teased her damp mane into copper coils. She wore leggings and a sloppy jumper to give the illusion of vulnerability, but that feeling became unpleasantly real as she waited for Adam to appear.

Lucy chewed her lip and stared at the door as she listened to Adam coming out of the kitchen. Her pulse quickened when his footsteps paused and for a moment she feared he had retreated upstairs, but then the door swung open. A breakfast tray appeared with a single red rose in a vase, two glasses of what looked like pink champagne but would be sparkling cordial, and a bowl of cheese puffs; another of her cravings.

When Adam stepped through the door, his expression was one of caution, as if he were approaching a wild animal. ‘I know Valentine’s Day is a week off but I feel like I should make an effort,’ he said. ‘The lasagne’s going to be a while so these are to tide you over.’

Lucy went to speak but it came out as a sob. ‘I’m such an evil cow,’ she cried. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m being so horrible to you and I don’t deserve any of this!’

Hiding her face in shame, Lucy couldn’t see Adam’s reaction but she heard him place the tray on the coffee table. The sofa sagged and a moment later, he was pulling her into his arms. She heard him take a breath to speak but she got there first.

‘Don’t you dare say nice things to me,’ she warned. ‘Tell me I’m a bitch.’

He kissed the top of her head.

When she looked up into his face, she hoped their daughter would inherit Adam’s kind eyes. They melted her heart. ‘I know you’re only trying to take care of me.’

‘And failing miserably,’ he said.

‘No, you’re not,’ she replied as she relaxed into him. ‘I shouldn’t need taking care of.’

Adam had taken off his suit jacket and tie but, despite a day in the office, Lucy could still smell the fabric conditioner on his shirt. Adam could choose to go to work in T-shirt and jeans if he wasn’t meeting clients but he liked to dress smartly. He had been wearing a formal jacket when she had first met him that fateful summer’s evening, albeit matched with chinos.

Adam’s boss, Ranjit, had organized an impromptu mid-week barbecue to celebrate a big contract and make the most of the glorious weather. Lucy had simply been dropping off the painting his wife had commissioned and she had been in a rush, needing to get home to pick up her backpack and tent before catching a coach to Leeds. She was dressed in her festival gear complete with cut-off jeans and flowers in her hair and was champing at the bit to get moving, but Ranjit had insisted on introducing her to his friends and showing off the portrait of his two kids. Adam had shown a keen interest, despite having no children or pets for her to paint, and she had given him her number. She had moved in with him six months later, had married him the following summer and this summer they would be parents. It had all happened so fast.

‘This forgetfulness is really getting to you, isn’t it?’

‘I felt better after speaking to Mum but knowing it’s my hormones doesn’t make it any less frustrating.’

He gave her a quick squeeze. ‘Could it be that you’re not completely convinced it is this baby brain thing?’

‘It does make sense,’ she tried.

‘But …?’ he asked, and when she didn’t answer he added, ‘You’re thinking about your dad, aren’t you?’

Despite her best efforts, Lucy could feel her frustrations rise up again, twisting her insides. She was trying not to think about her dad, and while her little mishaps were getting to her, she could accept that they were the benign symptoms of life as a new wife and mother, or at least she would if Adam’s prodding didn’t unsettle her so much. Did he see her unravelling in ways that she could not?

‘I know you mean well but this has nothing to do with what happened with Dad. I’m not the first person who’s survived a troubled childhood.’

She shot him a pointed look but Adam didn’t flinch. He had told her only the salient facts about his early life, but it was enough for Lucy to realize that there was more than one way to rend apart a family. Adam had chosen to block out the pain of his past, which was fine, that was how some people survived. It had worked for her mum, and Lucy was eager to follow their example.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she continued. ‘I’m annoyed by my own carelessness, that’s all.’

‘Why won’t you talk about this, Lucy?’ he asked. ‘Is it too scary to admit that what happened with your dad might have left its mark?’

Adam scrutinized her features but before he could find what he was looking for, she dropped her head back down on his shoulder. Squeezing her eyes shut, Lucy let her mind fill with memories of her dad reading to her, playing with her, laughing and joking. There were darker memories too, sounds of raised voices, doors slamming, and silence. It was the silence that had scared her most, but she had been too young to understand why.

‘I’m not denying it left its mark. I was eight years old and I was confused, especially when no one would give me proper answers. I was scared that what happened to Dad would happen to Mum.’

‘Or to you?’

‘Maybe,’ she confessed, holding herself so taut that her body trembled.

With his chin resting on her head, Adam’s voice was muffled by her curls. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, but I’m not sure this is something we should ignore. You’re about to give birth and it’s natural for you to worry about what one generation might have passed on to the next.’

‘I know, but worrying won’t make it go away and talking about it isn’t helping,’ Lucy said as she forced herself up and reached for the glass of cordial. Taking a generous sip, she swallowed her fear.

Adam tugged at her jumper to bring her back to him. ‘How about we start this again?’ he said. ‘Let’s forget about lost keys and gas hobs.’

‘Tell me about your day,’ she said as brightly as she could manage. ‘Did you sort out that interface thing, or will you have to go to Manchester tomorrow?’

‘It couldn’t be fixed,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to be on site for the rest of the week, so expect some early starts and late nights.’

‘I’ll try not to fidget so much in bed,’ said Lucy, recalling his earlier complaint. ‘I don’t want you driving all that way with no sleep.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s not like I haven’t got used to all your thrashing about.’

She dug her elbow into his side. ‘I do not thrash about.’

‘It’s worse when you stop. Then you snore.’

When Lucy giggled, she was surprised how quickly she could switch from tears to laughter. Her husband had a special gift. ‘Now I know you’re lying.’

They were quiet for a moment, comfortable in each other’s arms. She felt safe enough to picture a scene four months from now when there would be chaos all about them. She imagined their panic as they threaded tiny limbs into complicated baby clothes, tripped over boxes of nappies or waged silent arguments over who had lost the TV remote as their baby slept. It was going to be amazing.

‘So what do you think?’ asked Adam.

‘Hmm?’ she said, coming back from her daydream.

‘The Sandstone Trail.’

‘What about the Sandstone Trail?’ she asked, confused by his non sequitur.

She knew the trail well because it was where Adam had taken her on one of their first dates. His firm had organized the gruelling two-day trek and one of their first stopping points had been a craggy outcrop on the sandstone ridge that ran from Frodsham to Whitchurch. Adam had lured her to the edge to take in the stunning view across the Cheshire plains and towards Liverpool, not realizing how she had trembled in fear. It was there, on the spot they now referred to as Heart’s Leap, that she had told him about her father and, if she wasn’t mistaken, it pinpointed the exact moment they had fallen in love.

‘Did you hear a word I was saying?’

Lucy straightened up, certain that her husband was teasing her and she would catch a sneaky smile on his face; instead his expression was one of concern. ‘But you didn’t say anything.’

Adam took a breath but whatever he was about to say was released with a sigh. ‘Never mind. I was saying that Ranjit’s organizing another charity walk this year.’

Lucy’s heart rattled against her ribcage. ‘You never spoke a word, Adam. Are you sure you weren’t simply thinking it in your head?’

Adam’s raised eyebrow spoke volumes, and while she didn’t understand how she could have remained oblivious to what was going on around her, she couldn’t face another debate that would only serve to highlight her shortcomings.

‘I must have been miles away,’ she said with a casual shrug that sent a cold shiver skittering down her spine. ‘I was thinking about the baby and how manic it’s going to be when she arrives.’ Draining her glass, she returned it to the tray with shaking hands. ‘So go on, tell me about the walk.’

‘Lucy …’ Adam began, less eager to gloss over what had just happened.

‘When is it?’

‘At the beginning of August,’ he said with a note of resignation. ‘I told Ranjit you probably wouldn’t want to do it.’

‘Too right. The baby will be less than two months old and I’d rather not risk it,’ she said. Although her lips were moving and words came out, her mind was elsewhere. She forced the panic to the corners of her mind where she wished it would stay. She needed to concentrate if she were to avoid another mistake. ‘Do you still want to do it?’

‘It depends on how you and the baby are doing. I wouldn’t leave you to cope on your own for the weekend if there were any problems.’

‘There won’t be,’ she said. ‘And I could always come and meet you at the refreshment stops.’

‘OK, I’ll put my name down,’ Adam said with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

Lifting her head slightly, Lucy said, ‘I can’t smell garlic. Are you sure you switched the oven on?’

Peeling himself away from his wife, Adam stood up. ‘Of course I switched it on,’ he said with an air of confidence that wasn’t meant to annoy, but it did. ‘I need to put the dough balls in for the last ten minutes though, and I might give the kitchen a quick wipe down while I’m waiting. There’s some interesting marks on the dining room table I think I should clean.’

Lucy winced. ‘That wasn’t a message for you.’

‘No?’

Adam remained looming over her until she gave in. ‘I told you I was an evil cow,’ she said.

Lucy’s sweet smile faded after Adam left the room. She swung her legs up and slumped back on the sofa so she could stare at the ceiling, but despite her brain’s apparent ability to disengage without notice, unwelcome thoughts turned inside her head. Like the orange reflector on the wheel of her pink bicycle, her mind spun faster and faster. She was ready for that horrible lurch of her stomach, but what she felt was a different kind of quickening.

‘Adam!’ she cried.

Having pulled up her jumper, Lucy’s hand was pressed over a spot a few inches above her groin when Adam burst into the room with a knife in his hand and his eyes open wide. It looked like a scene from a horror movie but Lucy was laughing.

‘I can feel her,’ she said.

Placing the knife on the coffee table, Adam dropped to his knees. ‘Are you sure?’

Leaving him to assume that this was the first time, Lucy took Adam’s hand and placed it where hers had been. ‘Can you feel anything?’

Since that first flutter, Lucy had been conscious of every gurgle in her stomach but she hadn’t felt anything as distinct as she had just now. Come meet your daddy, she told her daughter as she and Adam held their breath.

When her lungs started to burn, Lucy prepared to give up. ‘There!’ she said, pressing Adam’s fingers over the exact spot. ‘Did you feel that?’

Lucy wanted him to say yes. She needed the bond between them to be stronger than ever, but she could tell by Adam’s face that he hadn’t picked up the gentle flutter of butterfly wings inside her belly. She wouldn’t have minded a lie.

‘No,’ he said, tugging his hand away when she tried to keep it in place. Seeing the look of disappointment on his wife’s face, he added, ‘She needs to build up those footballer’s legs first. It won’t be long, and I can wait.’

When Adam returned to the kitchen, Lucy stayed where she was. She wished she had her husband’s patience but she was desperate to get past the last months of her pregnancy and, if she were honest, those first months after the birth. She wanted to be free of her raging hormones so that she could be reassured that they were the cause of her problems and nothing else. She was holding on by her fingernails to the hope that by the time Adam set off on the Sandstone Trail, normal service would be resumed.

4

‘How are you feeling, love?’ Viv asked as she passed the bread basket across the table. ‘No more morning sickness?’

‘I’m much better, thanks,’ Lucy said, tearing a piece of the bread over her soup bowl and letting the warm butter ooze between her fingers. She wished Adam’s mum would allow her guests to butter their own bread, or have it dry as Lucy preferred, but Viv liked to pre-empt her son’s needs and it didn’t seem to occur to her that his wife’s tastes might differ. Licking her fingers, she added, ‘But you should have seen my ankles last night. I’ve spent the last couple of days on my feet in my studio and I couldn’t have put on a pair of shoes if I’d tried.’

‘I told her they reminded me of elephant legs,’ Adam offered.

‘No, you didn’t!’ Lucy said before she had the chance to wonder if this was another conversation she had missed. A smile crept across Adam’s face and she relaxed. ‘You might have thought it, but you’re too much of a gentleman to say such a thing.’

Adam’s smile disappeared behind a soup spoon. He took a sniff of the gloopy liquid and his brow furrowed. ‘Did you put something different in this, Mum?’

Viv’s head snapped up. ‘No, it’s the same as always. Except, well, I did add a bit of leftover sweetcorn, but that’s all.’

Adam gave Lucy a knowing look. When they had first met, he had warned her about his mum’s cooking, and although they had fallen into a routine of visiting each of their mums on alternate Sundays, the difference was marked. Lucy’s mum made the perfect Sunday roast with enough trimmings to feed an army whilst Viv provided simpler fare, which was almost always soup. Adam told Lucy they were getting off lightly, but it didn’t stop her worrying about what might be in the muddy green liquid that had been blended beyond recognition. She preferred to wait until Adam had tasted it first.

‘At least you’ve passed the halfway mark,’ Viv said to Lucy. ‘It’s surprising how much a baby takes it out of you though.’ Lucy looked up in time to catch a glance between Adam and his mother. ‘You can’t expect to feel like you did before. Being a mum is a big adjustment and your body often races ahead before your head has a chance to catch up. It’s all perfectly natural.’

Lucy’s smile was tight as she realized Adam had snitched on her. How was she meant to feel less anxious when he was worrying twice as much on her behalf, and inviting others to join him? In the last few days, she had checked and double-checked everything she did and, so far, her efforts had been rewarded.

‘I’ve been a bit scatter-brained lately but nothing worth mentioning,’ she said, aiming her last comment at Adam.

‘How’s work going, son?’ Viv asked to ease over the awkwardness.

‘Couldn’t be better. There are problems as always but Ranjit trusts me to fix them. I don’t think it’ll be long before I’m leading my own projects, which will put a few noses out of joint.’

Viv’s eyebrows raised. ‘Naomi’s, by any chance?’

‘Naomi?’ Lucy asked as she scanned her memory for the name. She had met many of Adam’s colleagues at the various social gatherings Ranjit organized to keep his team tight. Adam wasn’t keen on such events but he put on a good show and it was paying off. She knew that. So why didn’t she know about someone called Naomi?

‘The new software developer?’ Adam offered. With a surreptitious roll of the eyes, he returned his attention to his mum. ‘She thought she could wow Ranjit with her new ideas that were obviously meant to show how archaic the rest of us are. It’s taken a while for her to realize that the boss is more impressed with people who pull together than trip each other up. He wants staff who offer stability, at home as well as at work, and that’s what he thinks I can offer, thanks to you two.’

‘And the baby when she comes along,’ Viv said, her eyes dancing.

‘She?’ Lucy asked. She was developing a crick in her neck from the looks she kept shooting at Adam. He had called in to see his mum earlier in the week to drop off her birthday present. She lived five miles away in Moreton and the detour was a minor one in comparison to the trek to visit Lucy’s mum. He hadn’t stayed long, but apparently long enough to fill Viv in on all the intimate details of their lives.

‘I couldn’t not tell her,’ Adam said. ‘Your mum knows and it seemed only fair.’

‘Oh dear, it wasn’t a secret, was it?’ Viv asked.

‘Why? Who else have you told?’ asked Adam, his sudden change of tone undeservingly harsh, given that he had been the one to spread the news further afield.

‘It’s OK,’ said Lucy when she saw the alarm on Viv’s face. ‘We might as well let everyone know. I call the baby her all the time and if anyone’s going to slip up, it’s going to be me.’ She watched Adam tap his fingers against his thumb, and when his agitation didn’t ease, she pushed the conversation on. ‘How was your birthday, Viv? Did you like our present?’

Lucy had bought her mother-in-law a long, woollen cardigan in a beautiful Tahitian blue that would brighten up some of the dark dresses and tunics Viv tended to wear. It was easy to forget that her mother-in-law wasn’t much older than her own mum. Her dour appearance disguised the fact that she was a good-looking woman, with a stunning shade of silver hair that Lucy envied. She wished she knew Viv well enough to tell her so and hoped the baby would bring them closer.

‘It’s lovely,’ Viv said. ‘I’ll save it for best.’

‘You’ve got a lot of flowers,’ remarked Adam.

Lucy had counted four vases dotted around the open-plan living space in Viv’s small bungalow. The blooms were mostly lilies and roses in complementary colours that suggested they were from the same bouquet. On the far side of the room, she had also noticed a line of birthday cards on the bookshelf. She could see the one Adam had picked out for his mum, dwarfed by its neighbour with a similar dedication to a loving mother. Although Lucy was unlikely to ever meet Adam’s brother, the signs were everywhere that he was rebuilding his relationship with his mother, and the look of apology Viv gave her eldest son was one Lucy had seen many times before. Whatever mistakes Viv had made in the past, she remained painfully aware of the damage she had caused.

‘Did you do anything nice on the day?’ Lucy asked to break the silence. She spoke louder than normal, as she often did with Viv. It was too easy to think she was addressing an elderly relative.

‘I was in work but I went for a pub lunch with the girls and the boss paid for it all. For an accountant, he can be quite generous.’

Adam dropped his spoon into the soup bowl with a loud plop and pushed it away. He had a playful expression on his face when he said, ‘Can he now?’

‘He’s half my age and happily married, Adam.’

‘Yeah, well, stranger things have happened,’ her son warned as the colour rose in Viv’s cheeks. ‘It’s great that you have people around you that care, Mum, but I’d hate to see someone taking advantage of you.’

Lucy sipped her soup quietly. Personally, she thought it would do Viv no harm to live a little but she understood why Adam was being protective. His mum had been divorced twice and the break up with Adam’s stepfather, Keith, had been particularly nasty, but that didn’t mean all men were bad, or that Viv’s choices would always be poor ones.

‘As long as I have my family looking out for me, I’m sure I’ll be fine,’ Viv said as she pulled at a loose thread on her cardigan. Unaware that the cuff had begun to pucker, she glanced briefly at Lucy, who had a spoonful of soup halfway to her mouth. ‘Are you ready for pudding? I picked up an Arctic roll the other day. Remember how much you used to love them, Adam?’

‘That wasn’t me,’ he said.

Viv’s features twisted again and Lucy couldn’t tell if she were angry at herself for the slip or was preparing to say something else. It turned out to be the latter. ‘I’ve decided to treat myself to a little break for my birthday,’ she announced. ‘All I need to do is sort out my passport.’

‘Ooh, that’s good!’ Lucy said, already impressed. Viv had a sister with an apartment on the Costa del Sol and Lucy was about to ask if she had finally agreed to go away with her when Adam voiced another theory.

‘You need a visa too if you’re going to the States.’

From the way Viv’s eyes brightened, she had been expecting a different response from her son. ‘Yes, I know. Scott’s given me all the instructions.’

Adam stopped fidgeting with his fingers and placed both hands palm down on the table. ‘Yeah, I bet he has.’

‘When are you going, Viv?’ asked Lucy, desperate to keep the conversation on track.

‘Next month, in time for Mother’s Day if I can get everything sorted. I’ve never been to New York before and there’s so much I want to see.’

‘So the son who’s spent half his life forgetting he has a mother wants to see you on Mother’s Day?’ Adam asked quietly. It had taken a moment or two for the news his mum had imparted to sink in, but the reaction Viv had feared was beginning to emerge. ‘Why then? They don’t even celebrate Mother’s Day in the States until later in the year.’

‘I didn’t want to go away too close to Lucy’s due date.’

‘You’ve told him about the baby?’ hissed Adam.

The spidery thread Viv had been pulling from her sleeve came away with a snap and she rolled it into a small ball between her finger and thumb. ‘You didn’t say I had to keep it a secret, love. And Lucy said before it was OK.’

‘I’m not talking about the sex of the baby,’ Adam said. ‘I didn’t want him to know we were having one at all and I’m surprised that needed saying. Since when did you get so pally?’

‘I’m there whenever he needs me, as I am with you,’ Viv said. ‘And Scott’s changed a lot in the year since Keith’s heart attack. I think the scare made him realize how important all his family is to him. That includes you, Adam.’

‘No, it doesn’t. And if you had any sense, you’d keep away. What hurts you, hurts me, Mum. Remember that.’

‘We have to give him a chance, Adam.’

‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Adam said, standing abruptly.

He left the two women staring after him and then at each other. There were tears in Viv’s eyes when she asked, ‘Will you speak to him? Will you tell him I’m sorry?’

Lucy wanted to ask Viv what she had to be sorry about when it was Adam who was behaving unreasonably, but she knew she would be asking the wrong person.

5

Sitting behind the wheel of his Lexus, Adam’s gaze was fixed on something ahead that no one else could see. He didn’t flinch as Lucy climbed into the car and slammed the door shut, or when she huffed and puffed while fastening her seatbelt.

The pressure around Lucy’s chest tightened as she recalled the anguish on Viv’s face. She would never talk to her mum like that, and she hadn’t expected it of Adam. Now that he had had time to cool down, she was sure he would go back inside to apologize before driving off.

The engine roared into life.

‘No, Adam,’ she said as he put the car in gear. ‘Don’t leave like this.’

Releasing the handbrake, Adam pulled out on to the road. ‘Why? What did she say to you?’

‘Just that she was sorry. Is it so wrong that she wants to spend more time with Scott? She said he’d changed.’

‘And you’re the expert on my brother all of a sudden, are you? Exactly how has he changed, Lucy?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what he was like before,’ she stammered.

‘Exactly. Don’t get involved.’

‘How can I not get involved? You’re my husband and Viv’s my mother-in-law, and in case you need reminding, we’re about to have a baby.’

‘Me need reminding?’

‘I know you’re upset but can’t you see how unreasonable you’re being?’ she said. ‘We need our family around us rather than at each other’s throats.’

‘Some things can’t be fixed.’

‘Look, forget about Scott. What about you and your mum?’ Lucy asked as they pulled up at a set of traffic lights. ‘Please, Adam. Family feuds seem like such a wasted effort. It happened with my dad and his brother. One minute they were running a business together and the next, whatever went on between them couldn’t be undone. Uncle Phil didn’t even show up to the funeral and maybe he doesn’t give Dad a passing thought, but what if he has to live with that bitterness and regret for the rest of his life? I’m thinking of you as much as I am your mum.’

The lights changed and they were on the move.

Quickly losing patience, Lucy said, ‘You can’t treat your mum like this!’

Snapping his head towards her, Adam said, ‘So you’re taking her side?’

‘No, I simply think—’

‘That I’m in the wrong,’ Adam finished for her. ‘Not all of us have to agree with what our mums tell us, Luce. Some of us quite like having an opinion of our own.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Adam sniffed and returned his attention to the road, his jaw clenched. Lucy didn’t like this side of Adam. He reminded her of a gerbil she once had. Most of the time he had been the most gentle of creatures, but if he didn’t want to go back into his cage and she had to corner him, he wasn’t averse to the odd nip.

‘Are you suggesting I don’t have a mind of my own?’ she asked.

‘Have you ever gone against your mum?’

‘It’s not about going against her. We talk things through and we reach a decision together.’

Adam continued to stare straight ahead but after a minute of tense silence, his shoulders sagged and he released his anger with a sigh. ‘Is it too much for you to recognize how controlling she can be sometimes? She even picks your friends for you.’

‘She didn’t pick you,’ Lucy said, attempting to make light of the comment now that their argument was on the wane. ‘If this is about Hannah, it was only a suggestion.’

‘Yeah, for you to get parental advice from someone who’s had more kids than she can cope with. You do remember saying that, don’t you?’

Lucy pressed her hands to her burning cheeks. She could hear someone saying the words as they drove home after their last trip, but since she couldn’t even remember who had been driving, why did she think she could remember who said what? ‘I suppose,’ she said, ready to accept that Adam’s memory of that particular event was more reliable than her own.

‘And you can’t deny you told your mum how chaotic Hannah is.’

‘Because I thought that was how you felt. She didn’t mean to laugh when you spilt your drink, that’s just Hannah. I’m used to how she is. She’s one of my oldest friends.’

‘Are you saying it’s because of me that you stopped seeing her?’ Adam asked with more hurt than annoyance.

‘I don’t know, I suppose,’ Lucy admitted, falling short of suggesting how he had used the spilt drink as an excuse to leave. ‘You never exactly enjoyed her company.’

Adam slumped back in his seat. ‘I honestly don’t know where this idea came from that I don’t like her. I’ll admit I’m worried that you might not be able to cope with all that extra stimulus when you’re around her, but if you want to see her, go right ahead. I’d hate people to think that I’m the one keeping you from your friends.’

‘I choose who I see. No one’s blaming you.’

‘Give them time,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll tell you what I think’s going on. You’re feeling guilty because it’s you who’s been distancing yourself from Hannah, and you’re using me as the excuse to make you feel better. Am I right?’

‘Can we stop talking about Hannah?’ Lucy asked, not liking the way she was losing her train of thought as she tried to unravel the reasons why she had lost touch with her friend. ‘I’ll go and see her if it makes you feel better, but right now I’m more concerned about you and your mum. I don’t want to see you falling out with her, Adam, and I don’t think you want that either.’

‘I know how this must look but you have to trust me on this,’ he said softly.

‘I do.’

‘Even though you said I was the one in the wrong?’

‘If I said that, I’m sorry.’

‘If?’

The question hung in the air and when Adam stopped at another set of lights, he dug out a tissue from the glove compartment and handed it to Lucy as if he expected her to burst into tears at any moment.

‘You don’t know what Scott’s like,’ Adam told her gently. ‘He couldn’t have planned this better, and if there’s one thing I know about my brother, it’s that he did plan this. He wants to drive a wedge between me and Mum.’

‘So prove him wrong.’

‘Mum knows I won’t stay mad at her for long.’

Sensing that she was winning him over, the pressure against Lucy’s chest began to ease. ‘That might be true, but does she have to work it out for herself? Please, let’s sort this.’

‘Fine,’ he said, releasing a sigh. ‘If it makes you happy.’

As they drove along a country lane some five minutes from home, Lucy looked for somewhere to turn the car around, but when she spotted a lay-by, Adam drove past. ‘Aren’t you going back?’ she asked.

‘I will,’ he said, ‘but it would be better if I went on my own. You’ve been upset enough for one day. It’s not good for you.’

‘I’m stronger than you think.’

Adam glanced down at the crumpled tissue in Lucy’s hand. ‘It’s not what I think that worries me.’

6

It had been a while since Lucy had been left to her own devices on a Saturday afternoon. She and Adam spent their weekends as a couple and rarely deviated from their routine of pleasing themselves on Saturday and their mothers on Sunday. Living life to a timetable was something Lucy was still getting used to but she had to admit it provided a sense of stability that she needed more than ever, hence her reasons for pushing Adam out the door after lunch. It had been a week since the argument with his mum and Adam had avoided her for long enough.

Lucy was happy to sacrifice a Saturday with her husband for the sake of family unity, but once Adam had gone, she was left to ponder what she should do with herself. The subject of her friendship with Hannah had been put on hold, but it seemed the perfect opportunity to resolve the matter once and for all. When Lucy had picked up the phone, she had told herself that if Hannah were too busy to meet up, at least she could say she had tried. There had been the sound a child’s tantrum playing out in the background and Hannah had jumped at the chance to escape.

Lucy left the house wrapped in extra layers that made her look twice as big as she felt. She hoped the concealed hood in her padded jacket wouldn’t be needed but as the wind tugged a loose curl from her hairband, she regretted not wearing a beanie hat. There wasn’t time to go back but she retraced her steps anyway. Yes, she had locked the front door.

‘Sorry, I’m late,’ Lucy said as she rushed along the promenade to give Hannah a hug. No sooner had they embraced than her friend’s chocolate-brown Labrador yanked them apart. He had sniffed out the scent of another dog a hundred yards away and was eager for introductions.

‘That’s all right,’ Hannah said as she was dragged off in what was thankfully the direction they intended.

In front of them was Marine Lake, a manmade coastal lake edged by the River Dee on three sides. Around its perimeter was a walkway wide enough for two friends and a dog.

‘I’m just glad you rang,’ Hannah continued. ‘It’s been too long, Lucy. You used to be our social secretary and I miss our nights out.’

‘Don’t get too excited. This bottle of water does actually contain water,’ Lucy said, recalling how they had smuggled vodka into bars and proceeded to chat up the barmen so they didn’t question why they were getting drunk on diet Cokes.

Hannah looked Lucy up and down as only close friends might. ‘That’s not all that’s changed. Where’s all the make-up gone?’

‘I’m wearing some,’ Lucy said, not surprised that it would be the first thing to be noticed. There had been a time when Lucy would spend more money on mascaras and eyeliners than she would ever admit to her mum, but it had been liberating to discover that Adam preferred a more natural look.

Hannah hadn’t changed at all and was as stunning as ever. Her dark silken hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her complexion had a natural glow that emphasized the vitality sparkling in her dark brown eyes. The thick eyeliner flicks might be bordering on what Adam would call gaudy, but it was a look that her friend had owned since their teenage years.

‘It really is good to see you, and such perfect timing,’ said Hannah. ‘It’s chaos back at home.’

‘I can imagine,’ Lucy said, smiling that Hannah would use the same term that sprung to mind whenever she pictured her friend’s house bursting at the seams.

‘You don’t fancy running off somewhere, do you, Luce? We never did manage to backpack around Europe.’

Yes, please, Lucy thought and was surprised how close she came to uttering the words aloud. She had been telling herself that her only reason for seeing Hannah was to prove how they had grown apart. She hadn’t expected to feel such a strong pull back to the life she had left behind. Or perhaps she had.

‘Things are different now,’ Lucy said, stroking a hand over her bump, although Hannah was too busy wrestling the dog to notice. ‘You have three kids to look after, in case you’ve forgotten. And a dog.’

‘And the cat’s had kittens.’

‘You have a cat too?’ gasped Lucy, taking a closer look at her friend and wondering how she managed to look so serene.

‘It sort of adopted us, though goodness knows why. I blame Samson,’ she said in a tone that made her dog’s ears prick. ‘I thought dogs and cats were meant to be sworn enemies, but I’m telling you, they’re in love. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the kittens had come out chocolate brown.’

As they veered off the promenade to begin their circuit of the lake, the tide was high and water lapped against the shale and rock marking the edges of the path. They faced the misty Welsh mountains on the opposite side of the river but Lucy’s gaze was drawn seawards. The leaden sky had sunk low enough to make grey ghosts of the wind turbines, while Hilbre Island and its smaller companions of Little Eye and Middle Eye remained dark outlines at the mouth of the river.

‘They are bloody cute kittens though,’ Hannah continued as Samson lost interest in the dog he had been stalking and began splashing in the puddles that pockmarked the path. ‘You don’t want one, do you?’

‘We did talk about getting a pet when I first moved in with Adam. I fancied a dog but I know they’re a big responsibility,’ she said as Samson shook his coat and sprayed the two women with salty seawater. ‘Adam liked the idea of a cat but I think we’re going to have our hands full with a baby.’

The subtle refusal was lost on Hannah who didn’t know the meaning of restraint – she had been the one responsible for the vomit stain on the sun lounger festering in Lucy’s mum’s garage. Pulling out her phone, she began flicking through reams of photos of fluffy kittens. ‘I thought you might like this ginger one,’ she said with a devilish smile.

Lucy peered at the screen being thrust under her nose. ‘Oh, it is adorable.’

‘They won’t be ready for another month, but it’s yours if you want it.’

‘Is it a girl or a boy?’ Lucy asked as if she were interested, which of course she wasn’t.

‘Haven’t the foggiest, but someone did tell me that ginger cats are usually boys.’

‘Don’t they spray everywhere though?’ Lucy said. Her previous experience of pets was limited to one nervous gerbil and a rabbit that had escaped after six months.

‘My advice is that you get him, or her, neutered as soon as you can,’ Hannah said. Seeing the sidelong glance Lucy gave her, she added, ‘Yeah, I know. I should take my own advice, but in my defence, Nutella was a fully grown cat when she rocked up. I was sort of hoping she’d already been done.’

‘Nutella?’

‘The kids named her, probably because I kept saying we’d be nuts to keep her.’

By Lucy’s calculation, Hannah’s three boys were aged one, four and six and from the brief glimpses of them in the background of the kitten photos, they were all thriving. ‘How do you cope with three kids?’ she asked.

‘Who said I was coping?’

‘You’re managing it better than I could. I don’t ever want to be pregnant again.’

‘Never say never,’ Hannah said. ‘Who would have guessed two years ago that you’d be married with a baby on the way? Your head must still be spinning.’

‘Actually, that’s not a bad description.’

‘You’re not having regrets, are you? I did worry that you might have rushed into things. It seemed like you were single one minute and the next thing I knew, you were married,’ Hannah said, her tone edging the last comment towards an accusation.

‘I’m sorry we didn’t invite you. We didn’t want anyone feeling obliged to pay for an expensive trip abroad, and neither of us were up for a big party when we got back,’ she added, hoping that Hannah hadn’t heard about the wedding reception Ranjit had thrown on their return – which had been attended mostly by Adam’s work colleagues anyway.

Resisting the pull of Samson’s leash, Hannah paused to give her friend a closer look. ‘You really have changed, haven’t you?’

Lucy chewed her lip. ‘I suppose I have, but for the record, I couldn’t be happier.’

‘You don’t have any regrets?’ asked Hannah, her tone suggesting she had something in mind.

‘Such as?’ Lucy dared to ask.

‘Such as marrying someone who doesn’t care too much for your friends.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Oh, so it’s just me he doesn’t like then. You can’t tell me he didn’t deliberately spill his drink over himself that last time you were at ours.’

‘Is that what you think?’ Lucy asked, glossing over the fact that it had crossed her mind at the time. ‘For the record, Adam does like you, in fact he said as much the other day.’

Hannah pulled a face that was a half-hearted plea for forgiveness. ‘Maybe I don’t know him well enough. All I can say is he must have hidden depths to have you so besotted.’

‘He does,’ Lucy said, thinking back to how Adam had sneaked into her heart simply by asking the questions that no one else had ever seemed interested in finding out the answers to, mostly about her past, but also how it had shaped who she was. He knew her like no one else, faults and all, and that was what worried her now. ‘And if anyone should be regretting getting married, it’s Adam.’ Her hand swept across her bump again, wiping off splatters of seawater from Samson’s boisterous attacks on the puddles. ‘He’s had a lot to put up with lately. I may not be as tired as I was when I first fell pregnant, but I’m getting more hopeless.’

‘I don’t believe that, and even if it’s time, it’s only to be expected.’

‘Is it? I never seem to get anything finished. We both do our fair share of the housework but all I seem to do is make extra work for Adam. He had to wash a whole load of washing again the other day after I’d accidentally left it in the machine. I couldn’t even remember putting it in, but it must have been there a while to come out all wet and stinking. And that’s only one of a long list of stupid things I’ve done lately. Mum says it’s baby brain.’

Hannah’s laugh was whipped away by the sea breeze and caught by a gull’s cry. ‘I still use that excuse.’

‘But it’s not an excuse,’ Lucy said. ‘Not with me.’

‘You’re actually serious, aren’t you?’ Hannah asked, catching sight of Lucy’s stricken face and slowing her pace to give her friend her full attention. ‘You’re due mid-June, aren’t you?’

Lucy nodded solemnly. ‘And I’m counting down the days.’

‘My emotions were all over the place with Isaac too,’ Hannah reassured her. ‘But that goes with the territory when it’s your first. With Josh, I felt sick from the minute I conceived until the day I delivered, while my little Sammy was a walk in the park and I couldn’t have asked for a better pregnancy. The one thing they all had in common was that it was worth it in the end. If I’d known you were going to hate it so much, I’d have offered to rent out my womb.’

Lucy looked out across the choppy waters of the estuary. At low tide, the exposed riverbed could be crossed on foot to reach Hilbre, but you had to aim first for Little Eye or else risk becoming trapped by sinking sand. Despite her boots clicking against solid ground, Lucy had the distinct feeling that she had taken the wrong path somewhere.

‘I don’t hate being pregnant,’ she said. ‘But it’s not exactly how I imagined it would be. It annoys me how slow-witted I’ve become. I’ve got this habit of zoning out, as if my mind can’t cope with growing a baby and listening to Adam at the same time.’

Hannah caught her next laugh at the back of her throat before it could escape. ‘It’s perfectly normal not to listen to your husband, Lucy.’

‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘I was late today because I couldn’t find my boots, or to be precise, I couldn’t find one of my boots. Who in their right mind loses one under the sofa and puts the other away in the closet?’

‘If we were meant to be in our right minds, no woman would willingly grow something inside her that was way too big for the opening God gave her.’

Lucy groaned. ‘Don’t remind me. I made the mistake of mentioning how worried I was to the midwife and she’s signed me up for an introductory antenatal class next month for nervous first-timers. Part of me would rather not know what’s coming,’ she said, taking the final corner and turning her back on the receding tide that would gradually expose the hidden dangers beneath.

‘If you’re anything like me, everything they tell you in those classes will go straight out of your head when the time comes, but if you need someone to talk to, I’m always at the end of the phone,’ Hannah promised. She tipped her head forward and lowered her voice when she added, ‘Now that you’ve remembered my number.’

‘I know, I’m sorry! We left it way too long. It’s finding the time that’s the problem,’ Lucy said, which felt like a poor excuse when Hannah had managed to hold on to her social life after she married. It was different for Lucy. She and Adam had their routines and it wasn’t that he didn’t like her having friends – not at all. They simply liked each other’s company more, and when Adam had given up his rock-climbing club so they could spend their weekends together, it felt right that she should make sacrifices too. She missed her friends, but of all Lucy’s relationships, Adam was the most important.

‘I get it, you only have eyes for Adam,’ Hannah said, ‘but I’m here if you need me.’

‘It will get better, won’t it?’ Lucy asked as they left the path and stepped back on to the promenade.

‘I promise. You’ll have this baby and wonder what all the fuss was about. Give it a year and you’ll be planning the next,’ Hannah said. She checked her watch. ‘Look, I’m really sorry, I know I said I’m here for you, but I should head home. There’s a limit to how long I can trust Jamie to look after the kids without putting his sanity or theirs at risk.’

‘I’m so glad you came. I’ve been cooped up in my studio all week and it’s been nice getting out of the house.’

‘Speaking of which, I might need a favour from you. Do you remember my nan and grandad?’

Lucy had a vague recollection of gate-crashing a family party. ‘The ones who celebrated their diamond wedding?’

‘And some,’ Hannah said. She paused to look up and scowl at the gull screeching above her head. ‘My nan died on Christmas Eve and, as awful as it was for us, it’s been devastating for Grandad. He’s eighty-two and he says he’s managing on his own but he misses Nan. He talks to her photos all the time and I was just thinking, it might be nice if the family clubbed together and had a portrait painted of her, and I know you’d do a bloody good job. Would you?’

Lucy’s heart clenched. She was putting the final touches to Ralph’s portrait and hadn’t yet decided what to do next. Adam’s idea of painting simply for pleasure was a tempting one and her walk around Marine Lake had already given her some ideas. ‘The way I am at the moment, Hannah, I’m not sure I’d do a painting like that justice.’

‘Still the perfectionist?’

‘I guess so,’ Lucy said with a sigh.

As they retraced their steps along the promenade, Lucy thought about the sure-footed woman Hannah assumed her still to be. The old Lucy got things right first time and never thought to double-check her work. Lucy missed her. Her new life was more of an illusion made up of smoke and mirrors, but if she could somehow carry on pretending to be the person everyone expected her to be, she might stand a chance of believing in herself again.

‘I tell you what, why don’t you send me some photos of your nan and even if I can’t do it now, I promise it’ll be my first job once I’ve had the baby and I’m free of all these stupid hormones.’ When Hannah screwed up her face, she added, ‘I know, I know, it’s not going to be easy with a new baby in tow, but Adam’s promised to work from home more and Mum’s cutting back on her hours so she can help too. I really do want to do it, Hannah. I wouldn’t even charge you.’

‘Firstly, of course we’ll pay for it, and waiting isn’t a problem,’ Hannah said. ‘The reason I’m hesitating is because I think Grandad needs to pick out the right photo. Maybe I could bring him along next time we meet and you can help him choose?’

Lucy’s face broke into a smile, liking the idea of another excuse to meet up. ‘That sounds perfect.’

‘Then the job’s yours,’ Hannah said as they reached the spot where they had met. After making their goodbyes, Hannah gave Lucy a fierce hug and as Samson dragged her away, she called back, ‘Don’t forget about the kitten!’

Lucy kept her smile all the way home. Adam had been wrong to worry that Hannah would make her feel worse. After simply one breezy walk along the promenade, Lucy felt so much better. And if meeting her friend was to prove a point, the point was she missed her. As was the norm with Hannah, she had put temptation in Lucy’s path, and not only the kitten, but the commission too. Lucy often painted portraits that came with stories that could break her heart, but the tears were worth it when she saw the expressions on her clients’ faces, especially when she added those little extra details that would mean something to the family; like Ralph’s slipper.

When Lucy reached home and found herself testing the lock on the front door yet again before going inside, she resented the relief that washed over her. She peeled off her layers and wandered into the kitchen where her eyes were immediately drawn to the gas hob. There was no blue flame because she had checked it at least three times before leaving the house. Why did she doubt herself at every turn?

Lucy switched on the kettle and dropped a teabag into a mug and as she waited for the water to boil, she played with a sprinkling of crumbs lurking on the countertop behind her jar of herbal teas. She crushed a particularly large clump into dust before sweeping the debris in her hand. The trails left behind were a level of messiness she could live with, and she doubted Hannah would consider it a mess at all, but Adam would notice and she would finish the job properly before he came home.

With her tea brewing, Lucy sat at the table to pull off her boots – which she would purposefully and consciously put away under the stairs before getting the rest of the house in order. Her feet were swollen and as she tugged at the first boot, her knee knocked against the table and a shower of petals rained down on to its surface.

The bouquet Adam had given her for Valentine’s Day took up most of the table top. Lucy hadn’t wanted to disturb the stunning arrangement so had left it in its pink box with its own water reservoir. She had added the sachet of food to prolong the life of the blooms but to her dismay, they were shrivelling up before her eyes. Many of the roses were denuded of petals and their stems drooped over the edge of the Cellophane cuff.

After pulling off her other boot, Lucy lifted the bouquet only for more petals to fall to their death. The box was lighter than she expected and as she tilted it from side to side, she felt no movement of water. She had topped it up the night before and it seemed impossible that the flowers would use up that much water so quickly, which left her wondering if it had been the night before. Cursing under her breath, she rushed to fetch a jug, knowing it was already too late.

This was why she doubted herself. Adam had wanted to spoil her by giving her a bouquet that rivalled the one his mum had received from Scott, but if they were meant to be a symbol of their relationship, Lucy was in trouble.

7

Hearing Adam’s car pull up outside, Lucy rested an elbow on the banister and settled into what she hoped was a casual pose. ‘How did it go with your mum?’ she asked as he stepped through the door.

Adam blinked in surprise. ‘Erm, good thanks.’

‘I’ve made a beef stew,’ she said. ‘And don’t look so worried. I checked with mum and she talked me through it. It tastes really good even if I do say so myself. Are you hungry yet?’

Adam slipped off his jacket and unfurled the scarf from around his neck. As he moved to the opposite side of the staircase to put his things away in the closet, Lucy repositioned herself in front of the kitchen door. The knot in her stomach tightened.

‘I had something to eat at Mum’s,’ he said, raking his fingers through his hair and scratching his head. ‘I thought you were going to suit yourself.’

‘But you never eat at your mum’s.’

‘I told you …’ His words trailed off. ‘Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Why don’t you have something else and we’ll save the stew for tomorrow?’

‘But we’re at Mum’s tomorrow.’ She swallowed hard. ‘What doesn’t matter, Adam?’

‘What?’

Her heart palpitations made for an unpleasant mix with her churning stomach. ‘You started to say something and then you said it doesn’t matter. Tell me.’

Adam looked suddenly tired, or had Lucy simply not noticed how the worry lines criss-crossing his brow had deepened over the last few months? His cheeks were ruddy from being out in the cold but that didn’t explain his watery eyes.

‘I said this morning that I’d risk Mum’s cooking.’

‘No you didn’t!’ she said, not meaning to snap but unable to contain herself.

She could recall the conversation in question quite clearly. They had been lying in bed, Lucy pressing Adam’s hand firmly on her belly as they waited in vain for him to feel her baby’s kicks. She would swear that she hadn’t lost track.

More calmly, she added, ‘You didn’t say anything about eating at your mum’s. We talked about what might be lurking in the freezer, that’s why I wanted to use up the braising steak.’

Adam raised his arm but couldn’t quite reach her, or he didn’t want to. ‘You’re right we did, and then I said how I might need to eat some humble pie, figuratively and literally.’

‘No, that’s not possible.’

‘So I didn’t say it?’

‘I’m not doubting you, but I don’t see how I could have forgotten something like that.’

Passing a hand across his face, Adam said, ‘But Lucy, you are doubting me.’ He released a sigh with a hiss. ‘Fine! I’m the one having conversations with myself. I’m the one who leaves the gas rings on.’

Adam made a move to go into the kitchen but Lucy stood her ground. ‘No, I’m not saying that.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what you’re saying,’ he said, pushing past her. ‘I know you like to be little miss perfect and this stuff is driving you crazy, but have you ever stopped to think about what effect it’s having on me? You’re not the only …’

Adam had walked past the gleaming kitchen cupboards and the bubbling stew to stop a few feet away from the dining table. The sun was going down and the spotlights Lucy had selectively switched on in the kitchen had left the dining area in shadow, but not the complete darkness she had hoped for.

‘Adam,’ she began.

‘What have you done to the flowers?’ he asked, his voice full of the hurt Lucy had wanted to spare him.

She had thinned out the casualties and revived the remaining flowers as best she could using tricks she had searched for online, including snipping stems, adding sugar to the water and even something called the hat-pin trick. She had managed to prop up some of the weaker stems using the evergreen foliage but the end result was a haphazard arrangement of twigs and brown-edged blooms.

‘The water ran out and I hadn’t noticed.’

Adam sank down on to a chair and pulled at a rose with mottled edges. ‘You let them die.’

Lucy came behind him and folded her arms around his chest, resting her chin on his shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to. No one’s ever given me such a massive bunch of flowers before and I didn’t realize how much water they’d need. I’ve saved what I could.’

Adam covered his face in his hands and whether it was deliberate or not, he pulled away from her as he bent forward. Lucy went with him, making her posture unnatural and uncomfortable, but she refused to let go.

Adam exhaled. ‘I don’t seem to be able to get anything right.’

Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. They were words she had flailed herself with so often and it seemed wrong, hearing them uttered by her forbearing husband. ‘Don’t say that.’

‘I can’t help thinking it’s because I’m not looking after you. I wanted to wow you with the flowers but they were too much. I can see that now.’

Despite an overwhelming sense of guilt, Lucy felt a bite of anger too. If she were in a better frame of mind, if she wasn’t pregnant, if she wasn’t making so many stupid mistakes, she would tell Adam it was only a bunch of flowers. It wasn’t as if she had let a living creature die.

But Lucy wasn’t in a better frame of mind so she said nothing. Yes, they were only flowers, but they were also a symptom of something far more unsettling.

‘And it’s not just you I’ve failed,’ Adam continued, sighing deeply. ‘I’ve messed things up with Mum too.’

‘But you said it went OK.’ She held back from framing the remark as a question. She couldn’t assume that was what Adam had actually said. She had been too busy worrying about the dead bouquet to pay much heed to what he had told her. ‘You are speaking again, aren’t you?’

Adam straightened up and, taking Lucy’s hand, guided her on to his knee. He kissed her neck before pressing his cheek against her chest. ‘Yes, Mum never stopped,’ he said. ‘I was the one behaving unreasonably, as you so rightly pointed out. I went there determined to make it up to her but she didn’t give me the chance. She’s refusing to go to New York now. I did try to get her to change her mind back but she says it’s her decision. Not that it matters. It’ll still be my fault.’

‘If it’s Viv’s decision, you can’t be held responsible.’

‘You don’t know my brother.’

And that was the thing; Lucy knew very little of Adam’s half-brother, other than it pained Adam to talk about him. Scott had been twelve when Viv’s second marriage collapsed and it had been his choice to live with his dad. Fifteen-year-old Adam had been left with their mum and, already estranged from his own father, the fractures in the family had deteriorated. Long before Lucy had arrived on the scene, Scott had moved to the States and Adam had cut him out of his life completely. Viv’s relationship with Scott was only marginally better, although it was hard to tell because she rarely mentioned his name in front of Adam.

‘I did try to make her change her mind.’

‘I believe you,’ Lucy said, rocking him gently in her arms.

‘It seems like she spends her whole life saying sorry, but she can’t go back and change a single thing, so why try?’

When Adam fell silent, Lucy chose not to ask the many questions filling her mind. She wanted Adam to open up voluntarily about whatever childhood traumas made his relationship with his mum so fraught and the one with his brother untenable. She was desperate to hear his fears. Anything was better than considering her own.

‘How was your day?’ he asked. ‘Did you do anything else except decimate my bouquet?’

Lucy let the comment pass. ‘I went for a walk around Marine Lake with Hannah.’

‘You met her?’ asked Adam, pulling away from Lucy so he could see her face.

‘I said I would.’

‘No, you didn’t. I was under the impression that you thought seeing Hannah would be too much stimulus for you at the moment. That was what you said.’

‘Adam …’ Lucy began but suddenly her mouth was as parched as the shrivelled flowers she had thrown away.

‘When we were lying in bed and you were ignoring what I told you about eating at Mum’s, were you having a nice conversation with yourself about meeting Hannah, by any chance?’

‘No.’

‘So you didn’t tell me?’

‘Not then, but we’d talked about it.’

‘But you didn’t think to mention it this morning? Why sneak behind my back, Lucy?’ he asked and before she could answer, he added, ‘I suppose she’s as mad as ever. She hasn’t had any more kids, has she?’

‘No, she was fine. I liked catching up with her. Look, I called her on the off-chance she was free, it was a last-minute thing. You said I could.’

‘I – said – you – could?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that!’

‘Repeat after me,’ he said slowly. ‘Adam is not my lord and master.’

Lucy felt foolish but Adam held her gaze expectantly.

‘You’re not my lord and master,’ she mumbled quickly. ‘I know that. What I meant was, we both said I should see Hannah after Mum set me up.’

‘Luce …’ Adam wiped his hands over his face. ‘OK, fine, we said you should see her. Even though we said no such thing. So how was it?’

Lucy felt herself shrink inside but carried on bravely. ‘It was OK. She didn’t bring the kids with her and, for the record, even Hannah admits her life’s in chaos.’

‘Just like you said.’

‘Yes, just like I said,’ Lucy agreed, rather than open up that particular debate again. ‘And she doesn’t have more kids, but her cat’s had kittens.’

‘Poor mites. God help them in that house.’

Lucy bit her lip and, wanting to remind him of the people they once were, she said, ‘Which is why she’s looking for good homes. Remember when we were thinking about getting a kitten?’

‘Yeah, I wish we had now. I’d feel better letting you loose with a cat than I would a baby – at least it could look after itself,’ he said and, oblivious to how his barbed words had made his wife wince, he added, ‘So, aside from adding a cat to our household, what else have you two been conspiring about? Are you going to see her again?’

‘Only for business. She wants me to do a portrait of her nan. She died at Christmas and I said I’d meet her grandad to discuss what he wants.’

Adam’s body jerked. ‘Lucy, you said you’d stop painting.’

Lucy knew she had promised no such thing but she didn’t have the stomach for another argument. She could feel Adam tensing as he prepared to slide her off his knee. She stroked the side of his cheek. ‘I told her I’d do it after I’ve had the baby. I’ll keep putting her off,’ she promised.

‘Because it’s what you want or because you think it’s what I want?’ asked Adam, his stare intensifying as he waited for the right answer.

‘It’s what I want, Adam,’ she whispered softly.

Adam lifted the folds of her brushed-cotton shirt and began exploring her body with his hand. He pulled at her vest top until he found a route to her warm flesh. His fingertips were ice cold and she felt a shiver as he worked his way up to cup her breast. As his lips brushed against hers, he whispered, ‘That’s my girl. Now how about we go to bed and put all of this behind us?’

With a rush of relief, Lucy was eager to agree. Unlike the flowers, she had survived to fight another day.

8

Christine glanced anxiously at her daughter. ‘I’d feel better if you came in for a quick cuppa,’ she said. ‘It’s a long drive home.’

‘I don’t know, Mum. Adam should be back by now.’

Lucy took her hands off the steering wheel and dug her phone out of her pocket. The last text from her husband had been the apology for missing their introductory antenatal class.

Christine peered over her shoulder. ‘No message?’

‘Nothing,’ Lucy said through gritted teeth. ‘He can’t still be caught up in traffic.’

‘It must have been pretty serious to close off part of the motorway. We should be grateful Adam wasn’t the one involved in the accident.’

‘I know,’ Lucy said, ‘but I’d told the midwife how supportive he’s been and I felt really stupid turning up without him. He knew how important it was to me. He should have left earlier.’

‘And Adam will be thinking the exact same thing. Now come inside and relax before you race home to give him an earful.’

Lucy was forced to agree, and not simply because she didn’t think she would last the next forty minutes with the baby pressing on her bladder. The delay would give her time to build up the courage to drive back through the tunnel, a journey she would never have chanced if she hadn’t needed to pick up her mum as a stand-in. She expected Adam to be mortified when he found out.

There had been a time when Lucy joked with Adam that she was the better driver, but the one-and-a-half-mile drive beneath the Mersey had become a passage of fear. It stemmed from one particular incident when she had been driving through the tunnel with Adam, not long after she moved in with him and before she could use her baby brain as an excuse. Adam had been forced to yank the steering wheel to keep the car from drifting across the narrow lanes before Lucy even knew what was happening. Tonight, it was her anger alone that had kept her focused on driving between the white lines.

‘He’ll be as disappointed as you,’ Christine said after handing Lucy a cup of chamomile tea and taking a seat next to her on the sofa.

Lucy watched the rising steam curl and twist as she sighed. ‘He knows how much I want him to feel more involved. So far, all he’s been able to do is listen to my complaints about how sick I feel, or how tired I am,’ she said, stopping short of adding the more serious complaints about her ineptitude.

Since the disaster with the flowers a month ago, Lucy’s life had been peppered with similar mishaps, if not on such a grand scale. She wasn’t sure how she had managed to finish her painting of Ralph without calamity, but the end result had been surprisingly good. Lucy had been used to juggling three or four paintings in a month to earn a steady income, but it had been worth the time spent focused on just the one. When she handed over her latest piece to her overjoyed client, she had briefly regretted the call she had made to Hannah to put off her next commission. Her one consolation was that she was now painting for pleasure.

Freed from that sense of trepidation whenever she accepted a new commission, Lucy had made her latest work deliberately abstract. Capturing the ideas she had felt tugging at her imagination the day she had met Hannah, Lucy had produced three canvases that were experimental, to say the least. She had been so pleased with the end result that she had posted photos of them on her website a couple of days ago and although she was apprehensive about how well they would be received, her change in direction had taken the pressure off, as Adam had predicted. The baby was their main priority now.

‘I’ve been trying to get Adam to feel the baby’s kicks,’ she continued. ‘And he said he did the other day but I think he was only saying it to appease me. I want him to get excited about the baby instead of wondering why the hell we ever thought I was ready to be a mother.’

‘But you are ready! And do you seriously think he isn’t excited?’ said Christine with disbelief heavy in her voice. ‘He wants this baby as much as you do, Lucy. When you talk about her and your eyes light up, so do his. Trust me, I’ve been watching.’

‘But when I worry, so does he,’ Lucy said, lifting her cup to her lips and willing the chamomile to work its magic.

She knew Adam hadn’t deliberately missed the class and he had been full of remorse when he phoned to explain how he was sandwiched between two stationary cars on the M60, but she had refused to make him feel better. The last text he had sent had been a follow-up apology to the one he had tried to make during their call when Lucy had been yelling too much to hear it. She also knew that, however bad Adam felt, at some point she would feel worse and there was a good chance she would be the one apologizing by the end of the night. Even so, she couldn’t let go of her anger.

‘At the very least he owes you an apology. I didn’t mean to wreck your night out.’

‘Don’t be silly. I’m just sorry you had to drive over to Liverpool to pick me up. If I’d known I’d be needed, I wouldn’t have had a drink. You don’t think anyone noticed I was a bit squiffy, do you?’

‘You were there for me, that’s the main thing.’

‘Perhaps this should serve as a warning. I should be ready for any eventuality.’

‘I’ve still got three more months to go,’ countered Lucy. ‘And you should be able to go out and celebrate whatever spurious excuse for a celebration you happen to have. What was it this time?’

‘Nothing more than surviving another day at the tax office with double the workload and half the staff.’

‘You should retire if it’s getting too stressful,’ said Lucy, almost believing that the suggestion was purely for her mum’s benefit.

‘I couldn’t afford to, not yet,’ replied Christine. She looked into the depths of her cup and refused to meet Lucy’s gaze when she added, ‘And I hate to say this, but I might not be able to reduce my hours either. I haven’t put in a request yet because I’m not sure it would get approved.’

Lucy took a gulp of scalding tea that burnt her tongue. ‘But you’d be saving them money, surely?’

‘Our department is already cut back to the bone and the savings wouldn’t be enough to offset the disruption. My best chance would be to wait for a fresh round of budget cuts, or yet another reorganization.’ Christine took hold of her daughter’s hand when she added, ‘I want to help you more than anything but I think we both have to be prepared if it doesn’t happen as quickly as we’d like.’

Lucy kept her head down so her mum wouldn’t see the tears brimming.

‘I’m sorry, this is really bad timing,’ Christine said. ‘A more sober me would have picked a better day to bring it up.’

‘It’s not like I was expecting you to be on call twenty-four seven, Mum, and it’s fine. It means Adam will have to work from home a bit more than we were planning, that’s all. His boss doesn’t exactly chain him to the desk. As long as the work’s done, I’m sure no one would mind.’

‘And Adam will look after you, won’t he?’

‘Of course,’ Lucy said, her instinct to defend him overriding her present annoyance. ‘I know he has his moments, like tonight, and he can be …’

‘Awkward?’

Lucy found herself smiling. ‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘But he’s so loving, and incredibly patient.’

‘And I’m sure he’ll make a really good dad.’

Hoping to take advantage of her mum’s loose tongue, Lucy asked, ‘What about my dad? Was he a good father? Up until he died, I would have said he was the best, but what did I know? What was he really like, Mum?’

When the sofa creaked as Christine shifted position, Lucy gave her mum’s hand a tight squeeze. She wasn’t going to make it easy for her to evade the questions she had been dodging for two decades.

‘He loved you more than anyone,’ Christine said. There was a catch in her throat when she added, ‘He idolized you.’

‘If that’s true, then why did he do what he did?’

‘It’s—’

With her heart racing, Lucy shook her head. ‘Don’t say complicated.’

Lucy had never been given much information about the events surrounding her father’s death and as a result, she had spent most of her life making up her own theories. Her greatest fear of late was that whatever had been wrong with her dad had been passed on to his daughter, lying in wait until she was at her most vulnerable.

‘But it was complicated, love,’ Christine said.

‘Complicated how? What was so bad that he felt he couldn’t bear to spend another day with the daughter he idolized?’

‘He wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘I know that,’ Lucy said, her words strangled by twenty years of pain. ‘No one in their right mind jumps off a bridge for no apparent reason. Why did he do it, Mum? Were there any warning signs? Why wasn’t he thinking straight? Was he ill?’

Christine had never spoken of the possibility that Lucy’s dad had suffered from a mental illness, but Lucy was beginning to understand how something like that could creep up on a person. He could have been hiding it from everyone, even himself.

Closing her eyes briefly, Christine bowed her head and refused to meet her daughter’s gaze. ‘It was because of me,’ she said at last. ‘Your dad and I had a strong relationship when we first married and we told each other everything. But as time went on, we got in the habit of saying nothing rather than worrying or hurting each other. Eventually, we fell out of practice of talking at all except through you. You were the glue that kept us together.’

A shudder ran down Lucy’s spine. If she had been the glue that had kept her family together, why wasn’t she sitting there with both her parents? What had been wrong with her dad? What was wrong with her? Lucy could feel herself shutting down in panic – did she really want to know how bad things could get?

‘My biggest regret is that the last time we talked, we argued and I never got the chance to put things right,’ Christine confessed in a whisper.

Her quivering voice gave Lucy the excuse she needed to retreat from the past. ‘Oh, Mum, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have brought it up, but it’s been playing so much on my mind lately.’

‘You’re about to become a parent yourself and it’s natural to want to look back, but you need to concentrate on what lies ahead.’

‘I am,’ Lucy said, her half-empty cup trembling in her hand as she set it down. ‘And if you don’t mind, I’d better make a move.’

Lucy worked her way to the edge of the sofa and arched her back as she stood. She was about to put her phone in her handbag when it beeped.

‘Another apology?’ asked Christine.

Lucy grimaced as she read the message. ‘Actually, it’s from Hannah. She wants to know if I still want the kitten. They’re ready to leave their mum.’ Her friend was practically begging her to take one.

‘You’re not seriously considering it, are you?’

An image of wilting roses flashed through Lucy’s mind but she pushed it away. Adam had said she’d be fine looking after a cat and she had read somewhere that animals had a positive effect on mental health. A kitten would brighten her day and, more importantly, build her confidence in time for the birth of her daughter. Those poor kittens needed homes and even Adam had felt sorry for them.

‘It would be nice to have some company through the week, and Adam quite likes the idea,’ she said. She was stretching the truth a little, but he had talked about the addition of a cat to their household as if it were a fait accompli.

‘But you’re going to have your hands full as it is when the baby arrives.’

Lucy turned her phone to show her mum the photo Hannah had sent of a fluffy ginger kitten with a handwritten sign in front of it that read, ‘I love Lucy.’

Christine pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and smiled at the image. ‘Aww, he is cute.’

‘You could get one too. I don’t think she has homes for all of them yet.’

‘At least one of us has to keep hold of our senses,’ Christine warned.

If the comment was meant to dissuade her daughter from making a rash decision, it had the opposite effect.

‘He’s been de-flead and wormed but I’ll get him health checked anyway and neutered when he’s old enough. By the time the baby comes, he’ll be all settled in. I might even pick him up on my way home,’ Lucy said, liking the idea of snuggling up with a purring kitten that very night.

‘Shouldn’t you run it past Adam first?’

‘After tonight, I really don’t think he’s in any position to object. Do you?’

‘But you’re not prepared! You’ll need food and a litter tray.’

‘And cat litter, and food bowls, toys, a collar, and a bed,’ Lucy said as her musings turned into a firm decision. ‘And possibly a hot-water bottle to keep him warm until he gets used to not having his brothers and sisters around. There’s at least one twenty-four-hour supermarket on my way home. I can work fast.’

With a plan forming in her mind, Lucy messaged Hannah to let her know she was on her way. Her next message was to Adam, warning him that there was a surprise coming and as she pressed send, Christine picked up the coat Lucy had flung across the back of the sofa.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea, love?’

‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ she said as she slipped on her coat. ‘I’m glad I came in for that cuppa now.’

Lucy was grinning as she dug her hands into her pockets for her car keys, but her smile quickly faded.

‘I can’t find my keys. What have I done with them?’ she said as she searched her handbag. When her fingers failed to connect with anything vaguely key-shaped, she shook it close to her ear in case her sense of touch had deceived her.

Christine disappeared into the hall, and returned a moment later. ‘You didn’t leave them by the door.’

‘You don’t think they’re still in the ignition, do you?’

‘No, I’m sure I remember you locking up.’

Seeing the furrows deepen on her mum’s brow, Lucy knew she wasn’t certain. She had parked her little Fiat 500 on the road, and for all she knew, someone could have driven off while she sat contemplating whether or not she was responsible enough to take ownership of a kitten. She rushed past her mum and out of the house. The car was where she had left it and when she pulled the handle on the passenger door, she found it locked, confirming she couldn’t have left the keys inside. Nevertheless, Lucy cupped her hands around her face and pressed her nose against the window. The keys weren’t there.

‘Lucy!’ shouted her mum from the doorway, her arm raised. ‘I found them!’

Walking up the path, Lucy wondered where she had left them this time. She wouldn’t be surprised if they were dripping wet because she had tried to flush them down the toilet. ‘Where were they?’

‘At the back of the sofa. They must have fallen out of your pocket.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ Lucy said, taking the keys and keeping tight hold of them. She kissed her mum on the cheek. ‘I’d better be off.’

‘Are you sure about the kitten?’ Christine tried one last time.

No, Lucy thought. She was no longer certain about anything, but she hoped her stubborn streak meant she would never stop trying. She gave her mum one final hug and tried not to notice the spot where her dad might have stood, asking Lucy if she had the right change for the tunnel toll, or recognizing her anxiety and suggesting an alternative route through Widnes and across the bridge.

It was only when Lucy slipped behind the wheel of her car and spotted the flash of coins her mum had left in the cup holder that she was reminded it was a mistake to underestimate a mother.

9

Lucy was sprawled on the sofa with her laptop resting on a cushion and a ginger ball of fur balanced on the generous swell of her stomach. The kitten, who had been in her care for less than a day, paddy-pawed her gently as she sifted through emails and politely declined a couple of requests for portraits. The one message she couldn’t dismiss was from someone who wasn’t looking for a commission at all, but expressed an interest in her most recent work. What little savings Lucy had wouldn’t last for ever and an extra boost to her income would delay the day she had to ask Adam for pin money.

Her potential buyer was interested in all three paintings and Lucy was in the process of arranging a viewing. She knew better than to invite someone she didn’t know into her home, especially a man. Adam had given her a lecture the first time she had suggested it, and although she had accused him of being more jealous than concerned, he did have a point.

She had been about to send an email suggesting they meet at a local coffee shop when she heard Adam’s car pull up on to the drive. Setting her laptop to one side, she lifted the kitten and tried not to wake him as she placed him on the warmed cushion. He opened his milky blue eyes and gave her a curious look before settling back to sleep.

Adam’s keys rattled as he opened the front door and Lucy’s smile tightened as she waited patiently. When he didn’t appear, she heaved herself up, tugging up her leggings and smoothing out the olive-green smock before padding barefoot to the door. Wrapping her fingers around the handle, she thought she heard the rustle of shopping bags, followed by silence.

The door creaked as she opened it slowly, making her flinch. She had assumed Adam was in the kitchen but he peeked his head around the other side of the staircase. He had put his coat away in the closet but his scarf remained snug round his neck. ‘I thought I heard you creeping about.’

There was no telling from Adam’s expression how he was feeling and, if anything, it confirmed he shared her sense of confusion. ‘Hello,’ she said.

Lucy had spent the day going over what had happened after driving back from her mum’s the night before. She wasn’t sure if she was more scared that she couldn’t remember parts of their argument, or that she didn’t want to. Her strongest memory was of Adam’s first words.

‘What the hell’s that?’ he had asked when she had stumbled into the house laden with pet supplies and a kitten making woeful cries for his mum and litter mates.

‘We said we wanted a kitten and here he is! Isn’t he sweet?’

Although she’d had a smug look on her face, Lucy’s heart had been hammering against her chest. Adam’s glower had been the first warning that she had made another terrible mistake.

‘You actually think you can look after a kitten?’

‘Why not? You didn’t think it was a problem the other day when I mentioned it. You said they practically looked after themselves.’

‘Was this before or after you killed off the flowers I gave you? Oh, and let’s not forget the plants in the garden last year. Every single living thing you’ve ever taken responsibility for, you’ve killed. Why on earth would I think you could look after that?’ he had said, glaring at the poor mite trembling in Lucy’s arms. Or had it been she who had been trembling?

‘But you felt sorry for the kittens staying with Hannah,’ Lucy had tried. ‘You wanted to save one.’

‘By bringing it here? Are you mad?’ he had hissed.

And that was all it had taken to light the touch paper to an anger that Lucy had been unable to control. Those three words. That one accusation.

A quarrel had ensued during which she had become more and more agitated. She had been in the right – Adam had definitely said she could look after one – and besides, he was the one who was meant to be repentant. He should have agreed to anything she wanted, but he had refuted her arguments with ones of his own, and unfortunately, Adam had so much more ammunition. They had thrown insults and accusations at each other from across the kitchen.

‘Do you even see the mess you make?’ he had yelled, pointing out the greasy smears on cupboard doors. ‘I dread to think what state my house is going to be in when you’ve got a cat and a baby to look after.’

‘Your house?’ she had shouted back. ‘I’m not your housekeeper, Adam! I can do what I like in my own home. I can kick off my shoes and leave them where I want! I can wear the same clothes for more than one day if I want! I can leave dirty dishes until the next day – if – I – want. And I can open a packet of biscuits without reaching for the fucking Hoover!’

Lucy couldn’t quite remember what else had been on her list, only that she had screeched it from the top of her lungs with her hands balled into fists. Determined to prove a point, she had flung open a cupboard and taken out a container full of porridge oats. She had grabbed a handful and, in a shower of oats, had turned to face her husband again, but to her horror, Adam had been backing away with his arms held out as if to fend off an attack.

‘No more,’ he had begged. ‘Please don’t hit me. Please, Lucy.’

Except it had already been too late. Although Lucy had no recollection of laying a hand on Adam, there was a series of angry welts across his neck.

She had been unable to revisit what exactly had happened the evening before when her anger had pulled a red veil over her senses, but the evidence was irrefutable as Adam tugged off his scarf to reveal the scratch marks she had made.

‘Adam … I think I lost it last night,’ she said as she waited for him to put away his things. She heard the click of the closet door closing, but he stayed where he was. ‘Actually, I know I did.’

‘How have you been feeling today?’ he asked when he was ready to face her.

‘OK, I suppose.’

‘I was worried,’ he said, although his tone and expression gave away none of his concern. ‘I thought all that hysteria might have done some damage.’

If you were that anxious, Lucy thought, why did you leave me sobbing in the kitchen to clean up the mess on my own? Why did you pretend to be asleep when I went to bed? Why haven’t I heard from you all day?

‘I have no idea where all that anger came from,’ she offered instead.

‘But we both know where it was directed,’ Adam said, rubbing his neck. ‘I accept that I shouldn’t have missed the parenting class, and I was ready for the backlash, but that was some way to get back at me, Lucy.’

‘I was totally irrational, I know that,’ she said, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. The word irrational had featured strongly in their argument.

‘Is it still here?’

When Lucy pursed her lips together, her chin wobbled. ‘I’ve been cuddling him all day. He keeps me calm, Adam. I don’t want to give him back, but I will if you tell me to.’

‘And suddenly I’m the bad guy again.’

Lucy wasn’t sure, but she thought his lips were trembling too despite his set jaw. ‘I want to make things right. I want to forget all about the argument and if that means removing all evidence, I’m prepared to do it. That’s my decision.’

‘I used the kitten to explain away the scratch marks at work,’ he said. ‘I don’t think Naomi believed me. She’d love Ranjit to think my marriage is falling apart while she bangs on about getting engaged. The cat will have to stay so we can keep up the lie you’ve made me tell.’

Lucy wanted to go to Adam and kiss away the pain but she would feel better if he made the first move. She needed to know that he would remain by her side during this madness – her madness. It was a horrible, horrible word that frightened her, and she needed Adam to pull her back from the brink.

When he shifted position, Lucy took it as an invitation. She rushed towards the arms she was sure would open up for her, but Adam flinched as if expecting her to strike. She buried her head into his shoulder and there was a heart-stopping moment when his arms hung limply by his side, but in the next moment, he was holding her.

‘I love you, Adam,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t live without you.’

‘And I love you too,’ he whispered. ‘I just want my Lucy back.’

Lifting her head, she said, ‘I’m here. I’m still here.’

He smoothed the hair back from her forehead and the look in his eyes softened. ‘It’s not all your fault. I could have reacted better. I should have realized how the kitten was simply another symptom, and the more pregnant you are,’ he said, taking a step back to glance at her maternity smock, ‘the more likely it is that your moods will be erratic. I think I know where the anger came from and so do you. You’re scared that whatever affected your dad is now affecting you and, I have to be honest, it’s getting harder to pretend there isn’t a connection.’

‘If I’d known what I would be like, I’d never have let you marry me,’ Lucy confessed. ‘I never really gave much thought to what happened to Dad, or at least, not as much as I do now.’

‘You’ve been in denial, that’s all,’ Adam told her. ‘Look at how you used to live your life, pretending you were the same as all those friends who refused to acknowledge how much you were struggling. When you bounded into my life, you acted as if you didn’t have a care in the world, but anyone who was willing to take the time to get to know you could have seen through your act. It was inevitable that the past would catch up with you one day. All it was going to take was one trigger. Who knows what it was with your dad, but pregnancy seems to be what might have set you off.’

‘But if you knew I was such a screw-up, why did you ever bother with me?’

He kissed the top of her head. ‘Because I wanted to. You’re my screw-up now, Lucy. I promised to look after you and I will. I’ve juggled my workload and I’m working from home for the rest of the week. I’ll need to lock myself away in the office at some point, but I thought now might be a good time to start on the nursery.’

Lucy followed Adam’s gaze to the large carrier bag sitting by the front door. ‘What’s that?’

‘Paint.’

There were two spare bedrooms to choose from for the nursery and Adam had offered to relocate his office to the box room, but Lucy could tell he was loath to do it. If she needed him to stay at home more, it made sense that he should be comfortable, and they could always move the baby into the larger room when she was older.

The question of décor, however, had yet to be agreed. She planned to paint a mural and had initially dreamt up a gender-neutral scene with forest animals. That had been back when they hadn’t known the sex of the baby and Lucy had assumed they would be using her old cot with its squirrel and bunny rabbit motif. Lately, she had toyed with the idea of unicorns dancing on fluffy white clouds, but she had yet to convince Adam about having so much sky blue as the background colour in a little girl’s room.

‘What colour did you get?’

Adam returned to the bags and pulled out a five-litre pot of silk emulsion. It took all of Lucy’s self-control not to pull a face. ‘Pink,’ she said, flatly.

‘Obviously. You were right, it’s the only colour we could have picked. I did look at a pastel shade, but it’s such a small room and I thought this would make a bigger impact.’

Adam looked so pleased with himself that Lucy had to stop herself from pointing out that the deep shade he had chosen would make the room appear twice as small. She had no idea what had given him the impression she wanted any shade of pink as the backdrop for her mural, but she must have said something, so she concentrated on how she could work with what she had. It was entirely possible that unicorns lived in a world with bubble-gum-pink skies, and she could always make the clouds bigger and fluffier. ‘I can’t wait to get started.’

Adam shook his head. ‘Oh no, you’re not coming near it. All that stretching won’t be good for you and we can’t have you getting paint on your new clothes,’ he said, suppressing a smile when he added, ‘Although that shirt thing you’re wearing would make a good coverall when you’ve finished with it.’

‘You don’t like it?’ she asked, tugging at the hem and giving Adam a chance to reconsider. It was getting harder to feel attractive and a little white lie was all she needed.

‘I was joking, Luce. But if you’re feeling that pregnant,’ he said, glancing at her expanding girth that was emphasized by the smock, ‘it’s all the more reason not to take on more than you have to. It’s rest for you from now on.’

‘But I need to paint the mural.’

‘Oh, add that at a later date,’ he said with a waft of the hand. ‘You don’t seem to know how to slow down, and I’m sorry, but after last night, I’m putting my foot down. You invest too much of yourself in those pictures of yours and it’s been draining you.’

With the memory of their most recent argument haunting her, Lucy wasn’t ready for another, and besides, he had a point. ‘OK, I will take it easier,’ she said, which in her mind didn’t mean giving up completely. ‘No mural, but I do have to go out tomorrow. I think I’ve found a buyer for my new paintings.’

‘Don’t tell me, a housewife with more money than sense,’ guessed Adam.

Lucy didn’t correct him. Adam might suggest tagging along if he knew she were meeting a strange man on her own, and like he said, he had work to do.

‘I promise I won’t be out for long, I’m going to the café at Carr Farm garden centre and I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘It’s probably better that you’re not around to distract me.’

As if her presence alone were distraction enough, Adam put down the paint pot and took Lucy in his arms. ‘Hungry?’ he asked, and when Lucy smiled hopefully, he laughed and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘Later. I need sustenance.’

‘Me too,’ she admitted as all her anxieties fell away. ‘All I’ve had is a bowl of soup today and I didn’t finish that.’

Her ears pricked as she heard a gentle thud from the living room followed by a tiny mewl. Her kitten sounded more like a baby chick than a cat, and his chirping grew louder and more desperate as he searched for someone to take care of him.

‘Have we still got steak in the fridge?’ asked Adam, only to glance over his shoulder and add, ‘Or have you fed it to the cat?’

‘He’s a kitten, not a tiger,’ she said. ‘Hey, maybe that’s what we should call him. Tigger.’

‘Whatever. Your cat, your choice.’

Adam had forgiven her, but not enough to register more than a passing interest in their new addition, and he disappeared into the kitchen while Lucy crouched down to pick up the kitten. She caught up with Adam in time to hear him mutter something under his breath. Her blood ran cold. She could smell gas.

She watched in dismay as Adam raced to the patio doors and flung them open. ‘I didn’t leave the gas on,’ she said with absolute certainty. ‘I used the hob to heat up my soup but I definitely turned it off, and I checked it was off I don’t know how many times. It wasn’t on.’

Adam’s eyes narrowed.

Holding the kitten against her chest, Lucy could feel its tiny heart beating as fast as hers. ‘I – I suppose it’s possible I lowered the burner but didn’t turn it off completely. Was there a flame?’ she asked.

‘No, but it’s fine. These things are sent to try us,’ Adam said, looking at the cat.

She couldn’t read his expression as he approached, and for a split second she felt blinded by a flood of adrenaline – or fear. Holding on tightly to the kitten, she said, ‘I’m really, really s—’

‘Don’t say sorry,’ Adam ordered. ‘We both know you can’t help the way you are, especially when you’re so easily distracted.’

With some hesitation, Lucy was drawn into his arms with the kitten pressed between them and temporarily hidden from Adam’s sight.

‘It could be my hormones,’ Lucy offered, preferring the less terrifying explanation for her worsening condition. ‘And it won’t be for ever.’

‘Won’t it?’

The draught forcing its way through the kitchen was bitterly cold but as Adam kissed her forehead, Lucy felt a warmth rise up from her chest and she became choked with emotion. ‘I’m not my dad and I will do better – for as long as you’re willing to put up with me.’

Adam pulled away without giving her the answer she had been searching for. ‘You shouldn’t stay in here. The fumes won’t be good for you or the baby. Go and watch your garbage TV while I get on with the cooking.’

Lucy didn’t move. She wanted to tell him that she cared about their baby too. She would never repeat history and leave him with a child to bring up on his own, but to say such a thing would be to admit that the possibility existed. It wasn’t that she would ever do anything deliberately but, as the fading scent of gas in the air proved, she posed a real threat to the safety of herself and those around her – including her unborn child.

‘Go!’ Adam said, his eyes full of playful light.

Her husband seemed to have accepted her carelessness but Lucy knew that now was not the time to let her guard down.

10

Lucy had arrived to meet her potential buyer at Carr Farm but before heading over to the garden centre and the café, she felt compelled to check the boot. To her relief, she hadn’t imagined the struggle it had taken to fit three canvases into the limited space, and Mr Judson’s trip over from Southport wasn’t going to be wasted.

The garden centre was surprisingly busy for an overcast Thursday afternoon, and if Lucy hadn’t been there to sell her paintings she might have been tempted to take a look around, not that she would be buying any plants after last year’s fiasco. She had tried her best to nurture the raspberry and blueberry shrubs, but her best hadn’t been good enough and their leaves had blackened long before they had a chance to bear fruit.

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