“So what’s the inscription on the back?”

Realizing he was testing her, Maddy correctly repeated it.

“Mmm. I still can’t be sure if it’s stolen. I mean, you could have just memorized it.”

“Like I said, it’s my watch, given to me by my father on my sixteenth birthday.” Choked with memories, she could say no more.

“Okay. But if your father gave it to you, why would you want to let it go?”

“Because I pay my debts, that’s why.”

Maddy recalled the very day her father gave her that watch. Less than a year later, he was taken ill and died soon after; the shock of which killed her mother. Being an only child, Maddy had been left to fend for herself.

Unable to afford the rent on their two-bedroomed flat in Kilburn, North London, she had sold the bits of furniture for knockdown prices to a local secondhand shop, and started a series of live-in jobs at West End pubs, clubs and hotels. Her musical career had started very slowly in just these places. She’d be washing up one minute, and performing the next. It had been a long and often lonely journey through life, until she met Alice and fell in love with the monster she had now left behind.

“Get out, the pair of you!” the driver said resignedly.

As they climbed out, so did he. Seeking Maddy’s attention, he handed her the watch. “Here you are, love. I can see this watch means a lot to you.” He had noticed how tearful she was when handing it over. “We’ll forget the fare. You keep the watch, and don’t go offering it to strangers.”

Taken aback when she flung her arms round him and kissed him on the cheek, he simply nodded and hurried back round to the driver’s door. “Silly girls!” He watched the two of them go arm-in-arm down the street. “Let’s hope they learn how to keep out of trouble.”

As he drove past them, he opened his window to offer a few words of advice. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to, the pair of you, but you need to keep your guard up. There are some real bad buggers out there!”

Having sowed his seed of wisdom he moved on to his next fare, leaving Maddy and Ellen to head for the end terrace house, where they climbed the steps, waited while Ellen found the spare key in a secret place on a ledge by the front door, and went inside.

“It’s nothing grand,” Ellen apologized, putting on the lights and setting a match to a gas fire in the cozy back room. “It was my Aunt Dora’s house. She wasn’t short of money, so when she moved abroad, she signed the deeds over to me.”

While she flung off her jacket she explained, “I haven’t seen my dad for three years. He and my mum and I had a falling out and somehow none of us ever had the guts to apologize. You know how it is… things get twisted and nasty, and everybody digs their heels in. But I’m past worrying about it. The sad thing is that Mum died of liver cancer a year or so ago, before we’d made it up. But, you know what, Maddy, I didn’t cry. She and I never saw eye to eye, and Dad always took her side, even when he knew she was in the wrong – which was most of the time.”

“Have you any brothers or sisters?”

“A sister, Sally.”

“Is she younger or older than you?”

“She’s twenty-six – four years older and a great deal wiser than me.” Ellen gave a knowing smile. “A bit selfish too, as I recall.”

“In what way?”

“Well, for a start she never let the arguments upset her, the way I did. Instead she always managed to blame everybody else for her own shortcomings. Rather than try and make things better at home, she began making plans to get away from there. Eventually she went to Spain to live with my aunt. Last I heard, the two of them had gone into the hotel business and were doing very nicely, thank you. Mind you, I think she was jealous of me. I went to stage school and had extra music lessons while she had to go out to work in a boring office.” Ellen gave a chuckle. “I daresay I was a spoiled brat, and if I’d been her, I would have hated me too!”

Maddy grinned, but then asked, “Don’t you miss them?” She would have given anything to have her parents back.

Kicking off her shoes, Ellen fell into the big squashy armchair. “Oh, Sally always kept herself to herself, and Aunt Dora never had much to do with me. In fact, I reckon she only signed this place over to me because she felt guilty, seeing as she had already taken Sally under her wing.”

She fell silent as she thought of it all. “I didn’t know Aunt Dora as well as Sally did, so I don’t really miss her. But if I’m honest, I do miss Sally. I reckon her and me could be friends, now that I’ve grown up a bit. No way do I miss my parents though. My mother was a secret drinker, you see, and as for Dad… well, he’d always idolized her. In his eyes, she could do no wrong. He was either too stupid or too besotted to stand up for himself. And now I gather he’s got himself into a similar situation with a new woman. No. I’m well out of it. I’m lucky enough to have the best grandad in the world, though. He’s my mum’s dad, but I wish in a way he’d been my father.”

Clambering out of the chair, she gave vent to her curiosity. “What about you, Maddy? Are you still in touch with your family?”

Maddy took a moment to answer; it was still painful to talk about it, especially with a virtual stranger. “My dad got ill when I was seventeen,” she answered softly. “It turned to pneumonia, and he went downhill so fast, it was frightening. He never recovered, and from then on, it was as if Mum had gone with him.”

“In what way?”

Maddy shook her head. “She just never got over it. It was as if her world had come to an end. She gave up her job, hardly ate or slept.”

She remembered it as if it was only yesterday. “Sometimes early in the morning, I would hear her go out of the door, then hours later I’d find her up the churchyard, kneeling on his grave. It was awful, like she was a different person – someone I didn’t know any more.”

Her voice broke. “I tried so hard to help her, stopped going to school and stayed at home to keep her company, but she didn’t want to be helped. She wanted my dad back, nothing else… just my dad.” She paused. “I miss her so much. I miss them both, every day, every minute. It’s like an ache that won’t go away, so if I feel like that, how must she have felt?”

“Did you talk to her – about your dad, I mean?”

“Time and again I tried, I really did! Sometimes when I heard her sobbing in her bedroom, I’d knock on her door and beg to be let in. But she wouldn’t open the door. In the end, there was nothing anyone could do for her.” She shrugged. “Less than a year later, she followed him. And left me behind.”

“Oh, Maddy… I’m so very sorry.”

Maddy didn’t hear her. She was back there, living it all over again. “The doctors said it was a massive heart attack that killed her, but others said she died of a broken heart. And the more I think about it, the more I believe they were right. It wasn’t her fault – she just couldn’t live without him.”

“Have you any brothers or sisters?”

Maddy wearily shook her head. “My parents married late in life. I was an only child.”

“Are there any aunts and uncles?”

“There’s nobody. For a time I really thought there might be a future and a family with – that man – but I was stupid even to entertain the idea. I should have seen through him a long time ago, but I didn’t, and now I’m carrying his child.” She looked up with soulful eyes. “Oh Ellen, I’ve been such a fool.”

There was a timeless span of silence while Ellen and Maddy reflected on the evening and all its consequences, and possibly came to terms with some of what had happened.

A moment later, without saying a word, Ellen crossed the room, wrapped her arms round Maddy, and held her for what seemed an age.

To Maddy, already grieving for Jack and fearing for her darling Alice, that warm and sincere embrace meant more to her than Ellen could ever realize.