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Behind it all was fury. She was furious with herself for her pathetic, stupid attempt. How could she have thought that would be enough? Had she really believed he had aged that much?

His words echoed in her head. You really think that is enough to hurt me?

He’d also called her a fool. He was right. She was a fool. A fool who had wasted her son’s last chance at a life.

She picked up her calendar.

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30

It was Tuesday. Tuesday of the last week she would have with Max. Tuesday of the last week of his life.

She blinked, and looked at her son. He was smiling in his half-sleep.

She listened for the man. He normally came soon after they woke and Maggie put the lights on. Maggie assumed it was the morning out there, and the man came at the same time every day, but it was possible he had a camera in the room and knew when she had woken. She had looked for one and hadn’t found anything, but maybe it was too well hidden. She didn’t really care.

All she cared about now was the calendar.

She lay on the mattress, listening for him. There was no sound of scraping. No footsteps outside the door. No handle turning.

Nothing but the low hum of the electric bulb in the lamp and the soft breathing of her son next to her.

Maybe he wasn’t coming today. Maybe there was no food after what she had done. She didn’t care. What was hunger in the midst of all the rest of it?

Max, as he was every morning, was full of energy and plans for the day as soon as he woke up.

‘OK, Mummy,’ he said, arranging his Duplo on the floor in front of him. ‘Let’s make a city. And then we can go to the moon on the light beam.’

‘What a fun idea,’ Maggie said. It was hard to keep her tone light and a smile on her lips. It was important, though, and she had discovered that if she kept her eyes locked on his she could almost forget what was coming.

Almost. It was as though there was a shadow at the corner of her vision that she could never quite escape.

But Max didn’t need to know that. She didn’t want to ruin his day – his last days – with the knowledge of how few of them there were. Besides, what would she tell him? That he had two siblings, eleven and seven, who may or may not have been killed by the man who brought them food? That he was next? That the world they visited in the stories his mum told him was real, and she had been stolen from it? Even if she did he would not be able to understand it.

No: better to pretend everything was OK. Better to keep the looming darkness as far from him as possible.

She knelt next to him, and reached for a red block. She was about to hand it to him and suggest he use it as the base for a tower when she was hit by a vision of Max screaming, his face twisted in an uncomprehending grimace as the man dragged him from her arms and from the room leaving her sobbing on the bed, her heart torn into pieces, wondering how – if – she would survive.

And then it shifted from a vision to a memory, first of Seb and then of Leo, her lost boys, her stolen chicks, the babies she had been unable to save.

The babies who had come before Max. The babies whose fate he was now facing.

She gasped, and turned from Max. She gripped her knees and squeezed and tried to bring herself back to some semblance of control, her breathing fast and shallow.

‘Mummy?’ Max said, his eyes narrow with concern. ‘MUMMY! Stop it, Mummy!’

Maggie blinked, staring at the wall and taking deep breaths, her heart gradually slowing.