‘Why would she take your food?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you confronted her about it?’

‘I want evidence first. So you’ll bring the cameras?’

He was anxious, the tremor in his hand worse.

‘OK,’ Dorothy said, wondering if she’d be able to figure out how they worked.

There was a sound from the hall, a key in the front door, then it opened.83

‘Hello, Mr Glassman.’

Jacob tensed up, eyes wide. ‘That’s her. She’s not supposed to be back.’

‘She has a key, how did that happen?’

Jacob shrugged. ‘My daughter-in-law.’

A round young woman wearing lots of make-up and large hoop earrings came into the room and stopped when she saw Dorothy.

‘Hello, there,’ she said.

‘Hi.’

Jacob’s hand shook as he reached for his walking frame and stood. ‘I wasn’t expecting you back.’

‘Forgot my phone,’ Susan said, nodding at it on the kitchen worktop. She scoped Dorothy. ‘We don’t get many visitors, do we Mr Glassman?’

Her voice was too loud, as if Jacob was deaf.

Dorothy stood. ‘I’m Dorothy, a former colleague of Jacob’s. At the linguistics department.’

‘Right.’

‘I was just passing, thought I’d pop in and say hello. But I’ll get out of your hair.’

Jacob was shuffling towards the front door now, and Dorothy smiled at Susan as she passed, got a tight smile in response. She could feel Susan’s eyes on her all the way to the front door. She noticed a stairlift fitted on the stairs as she reached the front door and slid past Jacob.

He raised his eyebrows and spoke softly. ‘Is she still watching?’

Dorothy nodded.

‘She’s not in tomorrow morning, can you come back then?’

Dorothy thought about her own daughter back living with her again, her granddaughter just down the road, a strong network of women supporting each other. She thought about Jacob, alone in his big house.

‘Of course,’ she said.84

Judging by the numbers of cars parked on the road outside and along the paths in the graveyard, this was going to be a busy one. As Archie drove the hearse to the crematorium entrance, Dorothy saw a few smokers sucking on cigarettes and stubbing them out. They scuttled inside as the funeral car pulled up behind the hearse.