Craig looked at his watch, exaggerated movements, drunk and comical. ‘In that case I would love a nightcap.’

She led him inside, both of them goofing it, sharing a look that they knew this was dumb, but what is life if not a bunch of dumb mistakes that feel good at the time. Plus they were loaded, so fuck it.

The big house was quiet and dark, giving Jenny a tremor in her heart. She thought about the bodies lying in the fridges through the back, the dead guy in his coffin in one of the viewing rooms. She thought about her dad, he was part of this house, part of her life since the day she was born, and now he was a pile of dust that Dorothy didn’t know what to do with.

She took Craig upstairs to the kitchen, pulled whisky from a cupboard, found two tumblers and poured. He wandered to the whiteboards and perused them. She took her jacket off, placed it on the back of a chair and brought the drinks over, the smell reminding her of her dad after a long day’s work.300

Craig nodded at the whiteboards. ‘So you ladies are really taking this investigator thing seriously?’

Jenny shrugged, thought of Liam. ‘It’s kind of fallen into our laps. Hannah is obviously distraught about Mel, looking for answers, and Mum has something she needs to find out.’

Craig squinted at the scribbles on the board. ‘To do with Jim?’

‘Maybe, we’re still not sure.’

Craig took a sip of whisky and Jenny copied him, felt the burn, felt alive.

‘What about your adultery sting?’

‘I told him what his wife did,’ Jenny said, cringing at the memory. ‘He didn’t take it well.’

‘Marriages, eh?’

Schrödinger padded into the room and slunk around the table, his back raised, fur up. He approached Craig with a soft hiss then slipped out of the door.

‘I don’t think he likes me,’ Craig said.

‘Rival male in the house.’

‘Is that what I am?’

‘He’s the alpha male around here,’ Jenny said. ‘Since…’

She didn’t want to talk anymore, didn’t want to mention her dad or mum or daughter or any of it. Just wanted to be here in the bubble of the moment. What was it Liam said, we are our processes not our results? This was a process, her life was a process, you can’t judge a life by results. Divorced, jobless, homeless, fatherless, these were the results not the process.

She leaned in and kissed Craig, felt his surprise melt into reciprocation. His whisky glass moved to the side as he pressed into her, his other hand on her waist, a movement against her hip that she responded to.