My ex-husband invited the former wife he believed was still childless and miserable to his family’s Christmas at their military estate. He never imagined I would arrive on a government tactical helicopter — with four eight-year-olds who had his face.

PART 1

For eight years that man made no attempt to contact me. None.

Then on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in the November his name came up on my secure phone.

Grayson Vail.

I was at my desk at headquarters with four files open in front of me on a multistate thing that is not going in here, and I sat and looked at that screen for about eleven seconds.

Eight years, almost to the week.

That is how long it had been since he called my pregnancy a desperate manoeuvre to stop him leaving.

Eight years since he filed, arranged an overseas posting inside about four weeks, changed his number, and went.

Without attending one single appointment. Not the first one. Not the twenty-week.

And not the one in the March where a woman turned a screen round and told me how many there were, and I sat in that room on my own for about eleven minutes afterwards because I could not make my legs work.