Jean stared numbly at the phone numbers of her children, the strange long numbers they had these days – especially Sally’s, with the international code, the foreign-looking ‘0061’ at the start. They were written in biro on a strip of paper which never left the phone table, was held down with a kangaroo paperweight Sally had bought her. There was no point in trying James if Sally was doing it. Jean didn’t want to tie up the line, or whatever the phrase was. She would only get in the way. And yet, not to call him. Her son. James. Not to call him, if he was in danger.

She had sat down on the stairs while Sally was talking, but now she stood up again, and her fingers went shakily over the buttons. Nine-nine-seven. Her fingers left a clammy film across the handset and she looked at the phone cord quivering gently as she extended the receiver. No dial tone. ‘The person you are trying to call is not available.’

Jean put the receiver back into its cradle and took a deep, uneven breath. All right. She was going to get dressed. She would get dressed and put the kettle on. There was no point in trying to address this, this baffling emergency, without at least making things as normal as they could be. She would get dressed without waking Lee – not that he wouldn’t be sympathetic, but she needed to wrap her head around this alone. And by the time she had done all this, Sally would surely be on the line again, to say it was all fixed.

But it didn’t feel as if she could go back upstairs, somehow – not straight away. Jean’s heart was beating at a speed which she couldn’t remember it reaching for many years. These had been fairly quiet years, after all. An even keel. Some fresh air would be good, she thought, and went to the front door. The lock, the bolt, all the things you continued to do every night in case of some intruder, some wolf at the door. And yet now the wolf was here, had come in down the telephone line.