‘Are you not going to work, then?’ Tom asked, before moving into the hallway where Sadie and Callum were waiting in their coats and hats.

‘I am, just a bit later than usual today,’ she said.

‘Good for you.’ Tom winked. ‘You deserve to take it a bit slow for once. Remember to take a shower though, yeah?’ He pulled a face and walked towards the front door, slapping his keys into his pocket. ‘Right, kids, say goodbye to your mum, but don’t get too close!’

Chapter 29

Isobel

The night air hits my cheeks as I stumble out of the office, my fingers instantly fumbling in my pocket for my phone, punching out Si’s number.

Come on, I beg for him to pick up, the memory of the caller’s voice ringing in my ears. Instinctively, I feel in my other pocket for the recording device Maureen had bought for my birthday as a thank you for the stories I’d written publicising local fundraising events for the refuge.

‘Issy, what do you want? I’ve got to be in court in the morning.’ From the clarity of Si’s voice, there is no way he had been asleep and I remember that he is probably still pissed off about what had happened earlier.

‘I need you to come over. Please.’ My voice sounds rasping. There is a brief pause and then he says, ‘Fine. I’ll be there in five.’

By the time I get back to the flat he is already waiting at the door.

‘Fucking hell, that was quick,’ I say. ‘I thought you were in bed.’

A self-styled Bolshevik from Tunbridge Wells, Si had launched his own furious protest against rising rents and inflated coffee prices in Kentish Town by moving to a one-bed in Stamford Hill, which is twenty minutes away, minimum, even in a cab.

He looks at the floor. ‘I lied, I stayed out.’

‘Right. And you just happened to be …?’

‘Just around the corner from the office? Erm, yes. Jesus, Isobel, do you want me here or not?’

‘Sorry,’ I say, moving forward and taking his hand. ‘Come up.’

The light in the hall still isn’t working and as I push open the door to the flat, I briefly imagine it through Si’s eyes: the dingy kitchen counter, sparsely decorated with a couple of ashtrays and a jar of instant coffee. The same wall-hanging I’d inherited from the previous tenant when I moved in.

The floors are the original wooden boards, modernised with decades’ worth of stains, partially concealed by a battered Persian rug my mother bought years ago at a shop on Highgate Road; it was one of the few things they’d left behind when they moved.

‘Listen,’ I say, pulling out a bottle of whisky from one of the cupboards, along with two glasses. Pouring a triple measure in each, I pass one to Si, catching him inspecting the rim before he drinks.