A moment of seething silence in which Robin could sense Lennie gathering herself. She put her hand out – Don’t – but it was too late. ‘Ade loves Mum,’ Lennie said, voice tight. ‘He asked her to marry him.’

‘Len, it’s okay. You don’t—’

‘But it’s true. You were the one who said no so even if you had a fight, it doesn’t change that, does it?’

‘He asked you to marry him?’ Christine was staring. ‘And you said no? For god’s sake, why?’

‘Because I couldn’t … I just didn’t …’

‘Oh, you,’ her mother cried, ‘you, you, you. What about anyone else? What about poor Elena? Do you ever give her a second’s thought in all this, when you’re going around acting like you’re—’

‘What? How could you even—’

‘Robin – be quiet. Christine.’ Dennis had his hands out to the sides, boxing-ref style.

Her mother closed her eyes against the cruelty of the world, and the burden it had put upon her.

‘I’m fine, Gran,’ Lennie said. ‘Honestly.’

A hiatus, this time ended by Natalie. ‘So how long will you be here then? Your dad said you’re going to work for Maggie Hammond. That doesn’t mean you’re going to stay, does it?’

‘No.’ Please fucking god. ‘Maggie’s got a lot on so I’m going to help her until I straighten things out at the Met.’

‘Doesn’t she work for the council?’

‘She’s self-employed, they’re just one of her clients. It’s not just benefit fraud; there’s suspect insurance claims and—’

‘From Homicide Command in London to catching scroungers on the sick in Sparkhill,’ crowed Luke. ‘How the mighty have fallen.’

‘Luke, for the last time,’ said Dennis.

Cheeks flaming, Robin stood up. Blood pulsed in the backs of her hands. ‘Better to have fallen than to never even have tried to stand on your own two feet. You …’ The swirl of words and arguments and fury bottlenecked in her throat – she couldn’t choke them out. ‘You’re pathetic,’ she managed. ‘Just …’ She remembered Lennie. ‘Bugger off.’

She swung out of the room and took the stairs two at a time, her mother jabbering away behind her, a diatribe unchanged in twenty years: ‘I won’t have that language in this house; this is my home; I won’t have her behaving like this, Dennis; I just won’t.’

Robin slammed the bedroom door as she’d done a thousand times before, the wall shuddering as it always had. Sudden silence – after a few seconds she could hear herself breathing. She looked around and felt time judder to a stop.