"Oh no!" Hermione blurted as the grey darkness of the sky began to deepen, signaling the sunset behind the clouds. "Remus, we're keeping you from Teddy, aren't we? I'm so sorry—"

"It's all right, Hermione, really..."

"No, you should go to him," Hermione said, starting to stack plates so distractedly that she accidentally put one of his books on the pile. "We're trying to keep things unsuspicious, and if Andromeda thinks—"

She stopped, going pink. Harry also turned distinctly mauve, which meant he'd shared a few things with her.

"It's fine," Remus soothed them.

"But you'll want to spend tonight with him," Hermione said, still pink in the face.

"Yes," Remus said, although he hadn't made up his mind about that. He couldn't plot with Severus and visit his son. Both were so important that it seemed impossible to choose between them; but he had to. "It will give me a good alibi, too, in case you two are arrested," he added.

Hermione's pale face tinged green, but Harry only grinned.

"Let's clean up," she said, rather squeakily, standing with the mess of plates in her arms.

"I'll do that." Remus Accio'd them from her and banished them to the kitchen. "You two have a nice evening, now. Although," he looked at Hermione's grey face, "perhaps you should get some Dutch courage in you before you go."

"We've got it," Harry said, slinging his arm around her shoulders. "Come on, Hermione—once more to the beach, isn't it?"

"Once more unto the breach," she corrected. She paused to give Remus a clumsy kiss on the cheek, and then she and Harry (waving) were gone.

Remus locked the door behind them and made sure all the blinds were drawn before turning toward the bedroom—only Snape was already standing in the doorway. It was odd to see him in Muggle clothes. Remus didn't think he ever had, not even when Snape was flitting in and out of Grimmauld Place in the summer of '95. It was even more bizarre to see Severus Snape coming out of his bedroom into his tiny flat.

"When do you usually leave to see your son?"

"About now," Remus admitted.

"Then you ought to go."

"But—"

"Lupin, you shouldn't do anything differently. Not if you are under any kind of suspicion, no matter how asinine." His familiar face creased with annoyance. "I should not have come so obviously to see you. If your neighbors ask questions—"

"You didn't know," Remus protested.

"That doesn't mean I didn't fuck up." Snape was removing something from his robes—a tin flask and a little vial of hairs. "You will have to be doubly careful, Lupin. I won't come here anymore; you will have to come to me unless we have explicit reason to be elsewhere. Apparate to the beach once you've finished with your son. I assume you don't stay the night?"

"No. Severus, I'm sorry you had to wait all that time only to—"

"On the contrary, Lupin, I learned a great deal." Something in his face, though, was faintly sardonic. He dropped one of the hairs into the flask and drank its contents down. His grimace shifted out of familiarity into the dissonance of a stranger's face; his straight black hair crimped up from his shoulders into lighter brown curls, and his skin darkened slightly, until it was no longer pallid. He blinked at Remus, as if bringing him into focus. Remus had never Polyjuiced, so he didn't know how it felt; it didn't work on werewolves.

"I'll be over when Teddy's asleep," Remus said, trying to imagine that this really was Severus, not-so-deep inside. "He usually goes down some time before nine, depending on what kind of day he's had."

"The wards will let you in," Snape-the-stranger said, pulling out his wand. "Come whatever time you are available. There is much to discuss."

Then he Disillusioned himself, the lines of his Muggle clothes and unfamiliar face fading into the background of Remus' flat. Remus watched the shapes of his flat warp as Snape moved to the front door, opened it, and Disapparated.

Remus collected his coat and followed Severus' path out into the descending twilight.

He knocked on Andromeda's front door out of politeness; the wards told her he was there the moment he moved through them, and he could only pass through them because they had been charmed to accept him.

The door swung open with more force than usual. He stepped inside somewhat perplexed, because Andromeda's spell-work was usually tightly under her control.

"Da!" Teddy cried, trying to squirm out of Andromeda's arms: she had him clamped tight in a hug and was rocking back and forth on the sofa, sobbing.

A leaden chill thudded into Remus' stomach. He made it to the couch in two strides and knelt down beside her. "Andromeda?" he asked, forcing his voice to be calm. "What's the matter?"

She only shook her head and pressed her closed fist to her mouth, her fingers clutched around a crumpled piece of parchment. Teddy was making shrill mewling noises, trying to twist free of her arms, scraping at the backs of her hands with claw-tipped fox paws. Remus could see his fangs glinting over the bottom of his lip, his eyes going yellow.

"Andromeda, may I have Teddy?" Remus asked, still low and calm. "He's going to start biting you in a moment. I won't take him anywhere," he said, when she shook her head and tightened her hold, making Teddy hiss. "He'll just be here, beside you. All right?"

"No," she said. "No."

Remus didn't know what to do. He tried to focus on Teddy instead, but Teddy would have none of it. He screeched and sank his fangs into Andromeda's hand. She didn't move, didn't react in any way. Well, enough was enough. Remus took out his wand and forced her hand open; she spasmed, dislodging Teddy entirely. Remus managed to catch him before he hit the carpet, but Teddy hissed and swiped at his hand and darted off into the house.

"No!" Andromeda lurched off the couch. A door slammed in Teddy's bedroom; he must have shut himself in the closet.

"Andromeda, listen to me." Remus grabbed her by the wrist; she swung around as if to hit him, but he caught her other hand. "You need to get a hold of yourself," he told her sharply. "He's run off because you've frightened him. You need to calm down."

Andromeda was breathing hard, her face wet, pieces of her hair stuck to her cheeks. Her expression was both fragile and wild. For a moment he thought she might bite him herself, and then she just sank to her knees on the carpet, her hands pressed to her face. She started rocking back and forth slowly on the carpet, a low, sobbing moan emerging muffled from behind her hands. Remus had no idea what to do. He sank down next to her, not saying anything, rubbing the space between her shoulder blades.

"Read it," she whispered, her face tilted down at the floor.

At first he didn't understand what she meant, but then he remembered the crumpled bit of parchment. It had fluttered to the carpet next to them. He picked it up and caught the faintest trace of lavender scent. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but impeccably elegant. He turned it over, looking for a signature, and found it looped on the bottom on the back page.

Narcissa.

He turned the letter back over and read from the beginning:

Andromeda,

You may wonder, after all this time, by what token I presume to write to you. In these dark days, I wonder how I could not. It seems that every day I read new reports of magical citizens falling prey to a poison that has come from nowhere and leads back to no discernible source, and every day I feel the coldness of fear coil more tightly around my heart. Might we be next? Might you?

I have heard Muggles in my periphery speaking of Apocalypses, second comings at the millennial, and I wonder if maybe they are right, in a way. Perhaps the sins of the Dark Lord were so great, they have poisoned the land, and it is the destiny of every witch and wizard to suffer. I do not know—nor, it seems, does anyone else. If it is the end of our world, I do not wish to walk into death with so many things in my life unrepaired. At the end, we have nothing to lose, only a great deal to forgive.

I wish to see you again. I wish to see your grandson, my great-nephew. Either it will soon be too late, or we may yet escape if we run far enough. I am in France, far away (as yet) from the taint that is sweeping England, and I wish you and the child to stay safe with me as long as we all can. If you can find nothing in your heart for me, at least use this opportunity to keep him safe, as long as it may last. God willing, it will be forever.

All my love,

Your sister,

Narcissa

Remus heard a noise in the doorway to the hall and looked up to find Teddy peeking in on them, his fox ears pricked. When he saw Remus looking at him, he retreated a little back into the shadows of the hall, not quite ready to be noticed again.

For his part, Remus was stunned. Such a letter from Narcissa Malfoy, of all people...

Andromeda was leaning against the couch, her forehead propped on one hand, her eyes closed. He wondered what had upset her the most: the thought of such affection and regret from a sister who had stood on the side of the War that had killed her daughter, or the suggestion that this poison might soon affect Teddy and all of them. Surely she'd thought of that before. Remus had, while outlining the numbers of children affected. He'd thought with perfect, cold precision that if this poisoner hurt his son, Remus would find him and rip him open from bowels to sternum.

"Are you going to go?" he asked her.

She didn't answer right away. She wiped at her cheeks with slow, measured movements. He conjured a handkerchief but she didn't take it.

"Bellatrix killed Nymphadora," she said. "Narcissa knows it."

Remus couldn't say anything. He had known that, but still he could not speak.

"What is there to repair?" Andromeda turned to rest her back against the couch, staring sightlessly across her sitting-room. "What could survive after that?"

He heard Teddy scratching around in the hall, but either Andromeda didn't hear or she'd decided to let Teddy come to them, because she did not move.

"But she might be right that it's safer there," she said, just staring ahead. "Who cares about the company when Teddy might be safe?"

Technically that was true, but Remus doubted Teddy's safety among a bunch of Malfoys.

"I want you to look into it for me."

He blinked at her. She was finally looking at him, her eyes both exhausted and grim.

"Look into it? You mean—go to France—to Narcissa?"

"Yes. Meet with her. See if her offer is legitimate. If it's not, you may leave her to me. If it is, I think we should take her up on her hospitality."

"We," he repeated.

"You and Teddy and I."

"I didn't think I was invited."

"You're his father," she said, not blinking or flinching. "I wouldn't think you'd just let me leave with him."

"I don't have the right to stop you," he said bitterly, before he could stop himself.

"You don't have the legal privilege, but you have the right. What's to tie you here, anyway?" she asked, looking him straight in the eye. "A lingering responsibility to what? A world that you fought for, twice, and that denies you the right to raise your own child? Narcissa's got the right of it, with her talk of sins. You should let them burn to death."

If this had come from anyone but a Slytherin, Remus would have been startled. Slytherins—like Gryffindors—believed in retribution. If you had done something for someone, they owed you. If they failed to pay, they set themselves up for comeuppance tenfold.

"I read the papers," Andromeda said. "Artemisia Dent, the woman you nearly died for, worked on the board for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Pushed through some very draconian laws about werewolves."

"If we immolated everyone who was cruel to werewolves, there'd hardly be a soul left alive in magical Britain."

She eyed him for a few silent moments. "Looks like there will hardly be anyone left in any case, by the time this sick bastard is through with us. Go to France," she repeated. "If not for me, then for Teddy. You won't have to look Narcissa in the eye and tell her to pay up. I'll do it, gladly. Just see if the offer for sanctuary stands firm. I'll take care of the rest."

Teddy was fractious all evening, crying over small things and reacting badly whenever his father or grandmother tried to touch him. Remus wondered if he'd been that affected by Andromeda's desperation, or if perhaps the cold December air were crystallizing into a miasma of fear. Remus certainly felt as if anxiety had settled over his heart like a spider web.

Andromeda spent a great part of the evening looking at her photographs of Dora. Narcissa's letter had scraped old wounds open after all. Was she grieving for the loss of her sisters in the midst of her sorrow for her daughter?

He thought of Severus, locked up in that house on the island. Was his heart still full of Lily?

Of course it was. What a stupid question. The heart was always filled with people once you'd loved them. Losing them never mattered, not to the heart. He knew that as well as anyone alive.

He sat with Teddy in his room for a good two hours, trying to read him stories, lighting the lamp that spiraled shapes of dolphins, whales, swordfish, and octopi across the walls in glowing shapes. If the worst happened, he wanted to have everything to remember at the last, from the way Teddy hid under the rocking chair and hissed at him, to the way he finally crawled into Remus' lap, curled up like a cat, and fell gently into sleep.

It was well after ten o'clock by then, much later than Teddy normally went to bed, and Remus had promised to meet Severus. It was just as well, because he wasn't remotely sleepy. Weary, yes, but electrified.

Instead of Apparating straight to Severus' rocky beach, he went back to his flat, to the old shoe boxes of even older letters that he kept stashed in the back of his bedroom closet.

"Good thing I kept you all organized," he murmured.

From the second shoebox from the bottom he extracted sheaves of aged parchment bound with twine so old and delicate it snapped with hardly any effort. These letters were twenty years old, now.

He found the one he was looking for, the parchment deeply imprinted with the quill-scores of Lily's writing. Folding it up delicately, he slipped it into his coat pocket. On the nightstand, over the shoulder of his twenty-year-old self holding baby Harry, Lily waved at him, her smile glowing through the dimness of the room.

He closed his eyes and pictured the strip of Severus' beach, black against the night. A moment later, the pressure and chill of crossing more than two hundred kilometers had passed, and he felt the mist of the sea on his face.

Severus felt the wards chime across his skin around eleven o'clock, later than he'd expected Lupin. It wasn't raining, but the wind was fierce and the surf was churning, its salty spray misting the air. He Apparated to the strip of beach that was the only place guests could materialize, collided with something about his own size, and went down with it in a heap.

He didn't need the supernatural strength of the body heat to know it was Lupin; who else would it be? He got his wand lit at the same time Lupin did, and they both flinched at two sudden pinpoints of Lumos shining in their eyes.

"Sorry, Severus—" Lupin scrambled off him and helped him up, although Severus was perfectly capable of doing it himself.

"About as good a guest as a host, Lupin," Severus said. He grabbed Lupin's arm and said, "We're Apparating to the house," and vanished with him, squeezing them through the darkness and the cold and the briny sea spray until they stood on the damp stone balcony over the front door.

Severus spelled the doors open and pushed Lupin inside. The hall around them was little more than burnished shadows and pits of night. Severus had never needed much light to move around, having spent all his life in semi-darkness.

He closed the doors behind them. They met in the frame with a low but final-sounding boom.

"Did you say this was your grandfather's house?" Lupin asked in a near whisper. Severus could hardly make out anything of his face, just that it was turning this way and that, presumably as he looked around.

"Yes." Severus started the walk back to the library.

"It's—an impressive place," Lupin said, still in that half whisper.

"Why are you whispering? I don't have a choice, but you certainly do."

"I don't know, it just seems like the sort of place you whisper in, really... should I be worried about waking any of the paintings?" Severus saw Lupin look up at the walls, where the pale faces of former Princes were barely distinguishable in the darkness.

"The paintings have all been silenced. Simply keep away from the third floor of the western tower and you'll be fine."

"Why, what's there?"

"The ghost of my great-aunt."

The library was slightly brighter with the fire Severus kept stoked in the hearth, although the room was still primarily dark. The chairs beside the fire were visible enough, but shadows stained the walls. He supposed Lupin would want more lights lit.

"You're joking," Lupin said, although he didn't sound sure. "About the aunt—aren't you? Severus?"

"Would I do a thing like that? Make a joke?"

"Well, you just did." His lopsided smile was visible even in the firelight.

"My mother has been living here since—the past twenty years," Severus said, changing the direction of his reply. "Taking care of her aunt, who went mad some time ago. The woman died about a month back; her ghost lingered. Mother and I managed to trap it in the western tower; otherwise it would drift about the whole house shrieking and so forth. I'm being quite serious," Severus said, off the look on Lupin's face.

"I believe you," Lupin said, looking bewildered. "But that's horrible, Severus—"

"By all means, Lupin, if you want her popping up while you're visiting and caterwauling in your ear—"

"I didn't mean that, I meant—oh, just that the whole thing is horrible. I know it's hypocritical, but sometimes I hate pure-bloods... sorry."

"I'm not a pure-blood. Don't apologize to me, or to them. The lot of them deserve to be hated."

He went to light the lamps and then realized he'd taken them all out and put them around the house for when he needed them. Damn.

"Actually, speaking of pure-bloods," Lupin said, "I wanted to ask you something."

Severus only looked at him, waiting.

"Andromeda received a letter tonight. From Narcissa."

Severus blinked.

"She wanted to... repair the things between them that had gone wrong."

Severus blinked again.

"Before it was too late. She invited Andromeda to stay with her family in France, until England was safe again—if it ever was."

Severus blinked a third time. Lupin was looking at him shrewdly.

"Does that sound like Narcissa?" he asked, his pale eyes watching Severus. The firelight turned his irises as clear as water.

"Yes," said Severus after a few moments of consideration. He might as well tell him, he supposed... "For—some time she has wanted to contact her sister, but hasn't been able to bring herself to do it. She... feels guilt that her son survived the War and... her sister's daughter did not."

Lupin's wife. His son's mother.

"Christ," Lupin said, sounding intensely sad all of a sudden, "it isn't her fault."

"Of course it's not, Lupin, but does that matter? Don't you ever feel guilty that you—"

He broke off, his throat closing as suddenly as if his heart had leapt into it; only he had no heart, because it had broken and turned to dust a long time ago. There was only an emptiness inside him where there should have been feeling and warmth. And yet the sight of Lupin, his face in the golden red glow of the fire, his pale eyes as clear as water, as if Leglimency worked on him and Severus could see inside his soul the way he could everyone else's, made Severus feel as if he were falling through himself.

"So you think it's genuine," Lupin said.

"Yes," Severus managed.

"Well then," Lupin said, in a voice that would have been light, in some other lifetime, "I guess I'll also have to work a trip to France into my schedule. I don't suppose you know a fast, quiet way to get there?"

"Why would you go to France?"

"Andromeda wants me to check it out for her."

"So tell her you have. You've asked me and I've told you; you don't need to go."

Remus blinked. "That's... true, but... if it were just me, but for my son's sake—"

"Narcissa doesn't have anything up her sleeve. Family has always been important to her."

"Yes, but—blood-traitor part-werewolf family?"

"Your son can't be a werewolf. The curse propagates through the bite, not through—human means."

Lupin gave him a funny look. "He doesn't have any characteristics that we can see, but is a good, traditional pure-blood like Narcissa going to see it that way?"

Severus honestly didn't know. "She's got it in her head that he's her great-nephew. If she's decided something, Lupin, that's pretty much the end of it." Narcissa probably wouldn't appreciate him sharing this with Lupin—and in fact he didn't know why he was—but he said, "Narcissa... loves children. She always wanted more than Draco."

Lupin looked as though he hadn't thought Narcissa could be a person with genuine feelings or longings or desires that had never been fulfilled. Not that Severus could really blame him for that. Narcissa didn't really seem like such a person, except that every person felt those things.

"Well," Lupin said, "I won't say 'no' to anyone who wants to love Teddy, but I hope she realizes that if she wants to know my son, she's going to have to know me, too."

Severus pictured the look on Narcissa's face when she realized what she'd set herself up for. He wanted to be there to see it.

"I'm sure that will give her an attack of indigestion," he said. "I'll write to her and let her know."

"I was thinking I'd just show up. Attack without warning and all, you understand."

"How opportunistic of you."

"Well, you know." Lupin was smiling slightly in the firelight. "I figured it would be more prudent."

"Now you're employing Slytherin vocabulary. How long did it take you—forty years?"

"I'm not forty until March," Lupin said lightly. "But I'm starting to come around to a Slytherin way of thinking, perhaps."

"Yes—using Potter's fame and Granger's untarnished reputation to filch confidential government records." Severus wished the light were stronger, because Lupin's expression suggested he was blushing.

However, he spoiled the slight impression of cunning he'd made earlier that afternoon when Severus was eavesdropping by saying worriedly, "I hope they're all right—"

"Lupin, they will be fine. Potter may be the Gryffindor of Gryffindors, but Granger can keep him in line, and she's surprisingly prudent."

"I'm more worried about the poisoner realizing they're getting involved. I thought about not including them at all, but then I realized I couldn't not, Harry wouldn't let me sit him out—"

Severus was prepared to endure Lupin's fussing over his child, but he wasn't going to listen to self-flagellation over Potter, of all bloody people. "Lupin, unlike your infant son, Potter can take care of himself. That is what Albus raised him to do."

The cast of bitterness across his voice surprised him; he could tell it had surprised Lupin, too.

"What do you mean?" Lupin asked, somewhat cautiously. "I know you can't mean that literally, Severus, because Harry was raised by—"

"Lily's sister, Petunia. Albus might as well have set the boy to be brought up by me, Lupin. I told him how she would react, and he left the boy there anyway."

Lupin's face showed surprise, but not nearly enough as it would had if Potter hadn't told him all about Severus' change of heart. Of course he had. Lupin wouldn't have just taken someone else's word twice; once Dumbledore's, but not twice Potter's.

"I never met Petunia," Lupin said quietly. "Lily didn't talk much about her."

"Her sister suffered the curse many Muggles do, who get near magic and can't have it," he said bitterly. Although the implication that Petunia hadn't even come to Lily's wedding surprised him. Lily surely would have invited her. It wasn't as if Petunia had become a Death Eater, like her treacherous once-best friend.

Lupin appeared to be hesitating about something. Then he drew in a breath and said, "I've brought you something..."

Severus blinked yet again. "Brought me something."

Lupin nodded, like he wasn't sure he should do this. He rooted inside his coat pocket and drew out—a sheet of parchment folded into a letter.

"What's that?" Severus asked. "Misdirected mail?"

"Yes," Lupin said, which wasn't what he'd expected at all.

Lupin looked down at the letter. For a few moments he said nothing, and then in a voice so quiet Severus found himself leaning forward to hear him, said: "Back in '79, I had a pretty bad transformation, and I was out of pocket for a couple of days. When I got back to my flat, I found a couple of letters waiting for me. In the first one, Lily was wondering if I was all right... she said she'd had some kind of weird premonition, because she dreamed she'd sent me a letter the night before, but when she got up in the morning the letter was still sitting on her desk. But there were two letters from her. They both had my name on them, but..."

He held the letter out to Severus. "Open that," he said, still very quietly.

Severus took it, and hoped Lupin couldn't see in the indifferent light how the parchment shook with the tremors in his hand. Remus was scrawled across the parchment envelope, in Lily's handwriting. He knew Lily's handwriting as well as his own; he'd kept every letter she had ever written him.

He did not want to open this.

But he did, because Lupin was watching him with an expression that made Severus wish more than ever that he could Leglimize him, to prepare himself. He tilted the parchment toward the fire so he could read it, and felt as if everything inside him—bones, sinews, blood, viscera—had just vanished.

Severus, I just found out I'm about to be a mum and I'm so scared

It was a letter to him. She had written a letter to him.

He couldn't breathe.

"At first I had no idea what I was reading," Lupin said, still in that barely there voice. "I had to read it through several times before I understood... she'd written it to you and then accidentally sent it to me. It even took me a while to remember you'd been friends..."

Severus couldn't take his eyes off the letter, but he couldn't read it; all he could see was the net of words across the parchment, as incoherent as if they'd been written in a language long dead.

"She told us she was pregnant a few days later. I don't think she'd even told James when she wrote that."

Severus didn't know what to do. He felt like he was going blind, or mad.

"Severus." Lupin put his hand on his arm, just below the elbow. "I'm sorry—should I not have given it to you?"

Severus couldn't reply. He only looked up at Lupin blindly. What would his face be like? Whatever it was, Lupin's expression filled with such compassion and—regret...

"I'm glad I kept it, then," Lupin said. His hand was still on Severus' arm. Then it was withdrawing as he stood, leaving a chill in its place, a chill that seemed to pierce to Severus' empty core. "I'll leave things for tonight... all right? I'll see you tomorrow, come back here around nine? Is that all right?"

Severus managed to nod, although he didn't know how, because he still felt emptied out of everything. Lupin's hand returned—touching his shoulder, this time—and then he turned to go.

"You can't Apparate on the property," Severus managed to tell him. "I—Nitty—"

The house-elf appeared with a crack that split the silence. Lupin looked startled.

"Master wants Nitty?" she asked distastefully.

"Show Lupin out," Severus said, surprised to hear his voice folding back to normalcy, almost. Because he wasn't looking at the letter. He was still holding it, but not looking at it.

"Yes, Master," Nitty said, making it sound like an insult. He honestly didn't care. He had a letter from Lily—a letter she'd written him, not something meant for Black or anyone else—meant for him—

He heard the library door close, but it didn't matter. Shaking, he lit his wand and laid it on the arm of his chair, and between the burnished glow of the firelight and the starlight brightness of the Lumos, he read a letter sent to Lupin, meant for himself, twenty years ago.

Severus, I just found out I'm about to be a mum and I'm so scared. I know James will be happy, I should be, too, but all I can think of is how easily people can die. The Prewetts, Gideon and Fabian, turned up dead just a few days ago, did you know? They were killed by Death Eaters. I found out just hours after I'd found out about the baby. I couldn't stop crying. I was thinking about the baby and about them and I wondered if you'd been one of the five. I want to ask but I don't want to know unless the answer is no, and what if it's not?

Every time the Order reads out the list of Death Eaters that've been captured, I listen for your name and it's not on there, and then I'm so relieved I have to leave everyone else and just be by myself, because I can't tell them why I'm crying. Everyone thinks I'm a useless mess because I can't hex people properly in combat, even if they're Death Eaters, it upsets me too much, and then I cry when the lists of dead and captured Death Eaters are read out. I'm not telling them why. I can't. You saved me in September, I know it was you—when I was hit by that curse and it hurt like I was going to die, and someone took me away and healed me—I know that was you. I recognized the scar on your hand, and your eyes behind that stupid fucking mask—do you know what I felt seeing that? Could you see it in me? I wish I could ask you so you could tell me, because I don't know what I felt, I really don't, I still don't. All I know is that I'm so relieved when I find out they haven't caught you that I can't stop crying.

What kind of mum am I going to be? I don't feel like I know what's going on, ever—I feel like everything I do is so far beyond me, such a huge mistake, like I'm just blundering through life and I can't afford to, because it might get me killed. Only now it's not just me, because there's a baby. There's going to be a baby.

What am I going to do, Sev