Craig smiled. ‘I don’t know how we managed to make such an amazing human between us.’158

‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’

He smiled in recognition. ‘We tried our best to do that, for sure.’

‘Yet look how she turned out.’

A cloud flirted with the sun in the west.

‘Any news about her flatmate?’ Craig said.

Jenny thought about those pictures. The police would have spoken to Longhorn by now. She thought about Xander and Bradley.

‘She hasn’t shown up,’ she said.

‘It’s not just a student bender?’

Jenny shook her head. ‘Kids don’t do that anymore, not like we did. They don’t go on drug-fuelled adventures for days, especially not young women. They can’t afford to, for a start, every day at uni costs hundreds of pounds. And the world is a more dangerous place now for women.’

‘You think?’

‘Definitely.’

The Scandi girls were checking Tinder profiles on their phones and giggling, swiping away the arseholes one by one. If only it was that easy in real life. Craig looked at them laughing and Jenny was happy he’d finally acknowledged them. When she and Craig were together he would’ve commented on them, something innocuous, to let her know he was a man who noticed pretty girls, but that they weren’t a threat to Jenny. But that turned out to be another lie, of course. Once you know a man is capable of sleeping around, you just presume he is sleeping around. She wondered how Fiona dealt with that.

‘Well,’ Craig said. ‘I hope she turns up soon.’

‘Me too.’

Craig’s pint glass was empty and his hands were flat on the table in front of him. Jenny leaned forwards and placed her hands on top of his. He didn’t flinch, looked up and gave her a quizzical look.159

‘Thanks for being here,’ she said.

He shrugged like it was nothing.

She squeezed his hands then lifted her glass and finished her drink.

‘And I’ll have another double, thanks,’ she said.

160

31

DOROTHY

She pushed her glasses onto the top of her head and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. Her eyes ached from staring at the laptop screen so long and she was bored rigid from watching the mundanity of Jacob Glassman’s contained life. She thanked whatever higher powers existed that she still had her health and mobility at the age of seventy, and she worried like hell that she would live to ninety and be housebound and dependent on help.