stained the skin below unfocused eyes. Maria could be heard wailing from another room.
‘Oh.’ Loren made an attempt to rearrange her narrow features into a smile. ‘Is it that time? Love your witch costume, sweet pea.’
Nico, suspecting Loren had entirely forgotten Josie was supposed to be sleeping over, rested a reassuring hand on Josie’s shoulder, noting the sudden tension beneath his fingers. ‘She looks fantastic, doesn’t she? Told you Mum would be impressed, Josie.’
Josie drew closer to Nico, her voice high and unhappy. ‘Why’s Maria crying?’
Loren twitched round as if only just hearing the heartbroken sobs. ‘I’ve put her to bed but she keeps getting up. She has to learn to go to bed, doesn’t she?’ She forced a smile. Josie took a couple of tentative steps towards her and lifted her arms.
Then she stopped and wrinkled her nose. ‘You smell funny again.’
All Nico’s red flags flew up. Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped inside the flat and closed the door. It brought him close enough to his ex-wife to catch a strong whiff of stale alcohol. And maybe vomit. What the hell?
Instantly, he prioritised protecting Josie, whether or not that meant making decisions that weren’t his to make. ‘It’s OK, Josie,’ he said reassuringly, popping her overnight bag just inside the door. ‘Maria’s probably crying because she can hear your voice and wants to see you. How about you go and play with her while I talk to Mum?’
Josie gazed at him for several moments but Maria was still crying long, exhausted, heartrending wails, the hopeless kind of sobbing that had been going for a long time unanswered. ‘All right,’ she said. But she didn’t move.
‘It’s OK,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll be here.’
Finally, she headed down the hallway.
Touching Loren’s elbow, he ushered her into the lounge and pushed the door to, taking in her pasty skin and crumpled clothes. On the table stood an empty red wine bottle and a glass, also empty. A drying patch on the sofa could only be the vomit he’d detected earlier. His stomach churned.
‘Are you drunk?’ he asked neutrally, staring into her dilated pupils.
‘No!’ Loren said too loudly. She lowered her voice. ‘I was … winding down. I had a headache. I’m not sleeping well.’ Then she put her hand over her eyes in the familiar gesture. ‘OK. I might be tipsy. It’s hard being a single parent.’
Nico bit both lips to prevent himself from snapping, ‘You don’t have to tell me!’ Instead, he said, ‘I’m sorry you’re finding it difficult. Go and shower. You’ll feel brighter and then we can talk.’
After a moment when it seemed she might refuse, Loren nodded shakily and headed into the square hall from which other doors led. He headed off to find Josie, following the exhausted hurrrrr, hurrrr of a child who’s been crying so long she doesn’t know how to stop.
Softly entering the bedroom he knew Josie used on visits, he found his daughter kneeling on the floor, her little half-sister clinging to her like a bear cub halfway up a tree. The room smelled.
Josie looked up, witch hat sitting drunkenly on her head. Tears tracked through her green face paint. ‘Maria’s weed herself,’ she said in outrage. ‘She never wees herself, even though she’s little. And she’s not in her pyjamas so she can’t have been put to bed.’ Her candid blue eyes gazed at him and Nico could see she was drawing the same conclusions he was.
Loren had lied.
Maria had been left in her room unsupervised for so long she’d been unable to hold on for the toilet.
The two-year-old gazed at him through swollen eyes but remained trembling in her big sister’s embrace.
Nico saw Maria regularly. She was a sunny, likeable child with blonde hair that curled at the ends. Josie loved her with a passion and Nico had begun by refusing to blame her for Loren’s betrayal and, over time, had come to realise he genuinely didn’t harbour rancour towards her.
Now, anger and alarm boiling up at the distress of an innocent toddler, Nico assumed a reassuring don’t-worry-daddy-always-knows-what-to-do facade. ‘We’ll give Maria a quick bath and find her clean pyjamas, shall we? How about you show me where the bathroom is?’ Loren’s room he already knew to be en suite and he could hear her shower running. Then he thought of how a child might feel after being shut away to cry and reprioritised. ‘Actually, you get the bath running while I pop into the kitchen.’
Leaving the two girls heading hand in