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‘Evie,’ he took my hands, reading me, ‘what you fail to realize is that an awful lot of women, regardless of how nice Stacey is, would not want their husband's child in the house, let alone living with them.’

I gave this some thought. Put like that…

‘And what you don't realize,’ I said slowly, ‘in the spirit of full disclosure, is what I thought was going on. That in my darkest moments, I thought I'd lost you. Give a child a home? Oh, Ant, there's no comparison.’

We sat facing each other on the bed. After a moment, I lay my head on his shoulder. He drew me in close. We sat there huddled in silence. Eventually I sat back.

‘I know you don't know exactly, but… weeks? Months?’

‘Months. Maybe weeks. She doesn't want to suffer, or make Stacey suffer too long. She's in and out of the hospice. She'd like it all to be over by Christmas.’

My eyes widened. ‘Like Ali MacGraw.’

‘What?’

‘In Love Story.’ A lump rose in my throat. ‘When Ryan O'Neal goes to the hospital, she say she wants the troops home by Christmas.’

‘Oh.’ He looked blank, his knowledge of romantic movies less encyclopaedic than mine.

‘Ryan O'Neal gets on the bed, to hold her.’ My eyes swam as I remembered, even though it was the only scene I wasn't terribly comfortable with: all those tubes, blood bags… ‘And the father – the father's waiting in the corridor, trying not to cry. Oh – Ted!’

‘I know.’ Ant nodded, swallowing. ‘Ted's not good. Not good at all. Stacey's being unbelievable, but Ted—’

‘But surely Stacey might have gone there?’

‘Well, of course, he was the obvious choice. And he would have had her like a shot. Wanted to have her. But he could see… well, we all talked about it—’

‘Did you?’

‘Oh, yes, round the kitchen table the next day. Ted came back. Bella rang him to say she'd told us. So Ted, Bella, Stacey, Anna and I discussed it.’

Blimey. Anna. What a very grown-up conversation. No wonder she looked older.

‘And Bella was very firm. Ted's a tremendous grandfather, always will be, but she wanted a proper family for Stacey. A young family, and when Stacey got the interview at Oxford—’

I inhaled sharply. ‘It was a no-brainer.’

‘Exactly. They knew I was here. So that's when they wrote. Bella said they agonized for ages, thinking it wasn't fair on me, on you, knowing we had another child, knowing it was like dropping a bomb, that it was going to cause chaos, maybe even break up a family, that we might say bugger off, but knowing too, at the end of the day…’

‘She had to do the best for her child.’

‘Quite.’

‘Nothing else in the world matters.’

‘No.’

‘She did the right thing.’

‘I'm so glad you think so, Evie.’ He couldn't mask his relief. His hand closed over mine and he squeezed it, summoning up something else. ‘And I'm so, so glad I'm married to you.’

I couldn't help but smile. That was huge, coming from Ant. We sat there on the bed together, exchanging sad little smiles: a much emotionally travelled, middle-aged, married couple, holding hands. At length, I exhaled the deepest sigh. It seemed to unfold from the pit of my stomach. I stood up, tightening my dressing gown cord around me. Then I found my slippers and went to the door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To ring Bella.’

‘It's the middle of the night.’

‘She'll still be awake. And she'll be waiting for me to call.’

28

The following morning I drove to watch Anna in the final day of her pony competition. You couldn't have scripted the day. It was one of those hazy golden ones with just a faint breeze, which the calendar swore blind was late October, but the soft blue sky and diffused sunshine could lull one to believe might just as well be August. As I turned into Ed Pallister's farm, just down the lane from ours, and joined the line of parked cars abandoned by other Pony Club mothers in his front yard, it occurred to me that Bella Edgeworth wouldn't wake up to too many more mornings like these. Something Margaret Thatcher said the morning after the Brighton bombings about not being meant to see a similar day sprang