in that same room, down a corridor he had walked a thousand times, slept a three-year-old girl.
Three years old.
He did the arithmetic without meaning to. Nine months from October twelfth was July. Sophie’s birthday was in the second week of August. Close enough to make a grown man stop breathing.
He did not know which was worse — asking Clare whether the child who had slept on his lap might belong to him too, or being the man who was never allowed to ask.
He waited until the estate
