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There was another painful silence. I shuffled around and put my chin on TammyLee’s heart so that she could feel my loud purring. But I didn’t want to be there, in the middle of this fierce argument. I wanted to be in the kitchen, eating my tea in peace. I wanted to curl up on Amber’s bed and wait for her to come back and lie with me, and tell me about her trip to thebeach.

‘I respected you, for the way you look after your mum,’ Dylan said, ‘but I don’t have a home life and stuff like you. I live in a no-hopers’ flat and I’ve only got my mum and she’s pissed off with me most of the time. That day, when you told me you were pregnant, I was really immature. I got to thinking about it later, and actually dreaming about being a dad.’

TammyLee was quieter now. She was listening to him, and stroking me along my back and rubbing behind my ears with her fingers.

‘I watched you,’ continued Dylan, ‘all those months, and you were getting a bump. You just wore loose clothes and told everyone you were bingeing on junk food.’

‘So?’

‘So what happened? What happened to OUR baby? TammyLee, I’m not leaving until you tell me.’

‘I miscarried.’ TammyLee spat the words out like a tablet she couldn’t swallow.

Dylan stood up, and so did she, still holding me.

‘I … don’t … believe you,’ he said, forcefully, and his eyes narrowed.

‘Suit yourself.’

He took a step forward and put his face close to us. I felt TammyLee begin to tremble.

‘Get this, you lying bitch,’ Dylan hissed. ‘I intend to find out what you really did. I know when our baby should have been born … round about the eighteenth of May, I reckon. I read the papers, see? And I watch the news. I can find it all online … and if I find out you dumped him somewhere, I’ll take a DNA test, and YOU are going to take responsibility for what you did to MY baby. No one messes with me, or my family.’

With a final glare of his blue eyes, he left the garden in three strides, vaulted the gate into the road, and we listened to the thud-thud of his footsteps going away.

TammyLee was cold and shaking all over. She cried into my fur.

‘Oh, God, Tallulah. What am I going to DO?’

Chapter Twelve

A DARK AFTERNOON

I first encountered Dylan’s mum on a dark autumn afternoon. The leaves were falling in shoals, blowing along the road and piling into corners and gateways. I was sitting in a nest I’d made in the hedge, a cosy hiding place near the gate. I’d come outside for some thinking time, leaving the family clustered round the television, watching weather reports.

‘There’s now a red alert for prolonged, heavy rain,’ Max had said. ‘I’d better go and get some sandbags. We don’t want the river in the garden again.’

I didn’t know what he meant. I asked Amber, and she didn’t know either. But I remembered what my angel had said about the river being like a lion in the winter, and it made me uneasy. My instinctive attunement to the natural world gave me a sense of something ominous, a massive storm prowling out over the sea. I could feel its shadow, and taste its salt on the wind.

TammyLee had been full of anxiety since Dylan’s visit. Yet she continued to look after Diana and clean the house with breathtaking efficiency. She seemed able to flick a switch and suddenly become calm and cheerful, and proud of her ability to be her mum’s carer. She told no one, except me, of her private torment over Rocky.

‘Every day of my life, I think about Rocky,’ she often said, ‘and every day I hate myself for what I did. I might never see him again in my whole life, and I want to, so much. Supposing I couldn’t ever have another baby? And I’m so scared, Tallulah, you’re my only friend. I’m scaredI’ll go to prison if Dylan finds out. Oh, what am I going to DO?’

I could only be with her, and kiss her face, and purr, but the autumn days raced on and nothing happened.

Until today.

The heavy footsteps woke me up and I saw a pair of swollen, purple legs coming through the gate, and another set of legs in black boots and jeans. Dylan!

His mum was a mountain of a woman, her aura fizzling with indignation as she waddled down the path with Dylan slouching behind her, his eyes downcast. She didn’t use the doorbell, but banged the door with her fist.

Amber barked and barked, but she knocked again.‘I ain’t scared of your bloody dog. Come on, answer. I ain’t going nowhere ’til you’ve ’eard what I got to say.’ She sniffed loudly.

Alarmed, I ran, low to the ground, round the side of the house to the kitchen door, through the cat flap and under the sofa where I felt safe.

Max was getting up out of his armchair.

‘Who on earth is that? Stop barking, Amber.’

Amber ran to his side, her hackles ridged along her back. Max took her by the collar, dragged her into the conservatory and shut the door.‘QUIET. On your bed, now.’

He opened the front door, and Dylan’s mum came billowing into the hall.