The same went for Indy, another stray who pitched up three years ago to bury her Hindu parents, dentists killed in a car accident, leaving behind a rudderless daughter. But Dorothy saw something in her, and a month later she was answering phones, gathering information from clients and sorting admin. Now she was training to become a funeral director in her own right. Meanwhile she had slipped her way into Hannah’s heart and persuaded her to move into the flat she’d been left by her mum and dad, ten minutes’ walk away on Argyle Place.

Jenny stared at her dad as he charred and shrivelled, his essence mingling with the flames and smoke, dissipating into the universe. Part of her couldn’t believe she would never hear his dumb jokes again, that terrible vampire accent he put on sometimes to talk about death. The way he would wink at her, his little girl, during services, at the most inappropriate moments, making her cover her mouth and leave the room she’d sneaked into, because death was fascinating to kids.

But that fascination waned, being brought up around funerals began to take its toll. As a teenager she distanced herself, left home as soon as she could, studied journalism, worked, fell in love with Craig, had Hannah, divorced Craig, all the time staying away from death as much as possible.

But now death was back in her life.

She looked around. Tall oaks and pines lined the far wall of the garden, blocking the neighbours’ view. Over to her left was the open garage with the silver hearse parked inside, next to the workshop 4and embalming room. Those rooms adjoined the main house behind her, the large, three-storey Victorian sprawl that had been the Skelf family home for a hundred years. It had doubled as a funeral director’s for all that time, and a private investigator’s for the last decade, the businesses taking up the ground floor, the family living on the two floors above.

There was a rustle in the bushes to Jenny’s right and Schrödinger padded out from the foliage. The most recent of Dorothy’s strays, Schrödinger was a ginger tabby with the wiry body of a street cat and a supreme air of confidence. The name was Hannah’s idea and it stuck. As he got closer, Jenny saw something in his mouth. A bird, flashes of red, white and black on the face, yellow under the wing. A goldfinch.

Schrödinger never usually came near Jenny, she was a stranger round here, but he walked past the others and placed the finch at her feet. The cat glanced at the fire enveloping Jim’s body, sucking the energy from him, then wandered back into the bushes.

Jenny looked down at the goldfinch, blood smeared across the puncture wounds on its chest and throat.

Another dead body to dispose of.