Geraldine didn’t answer but she felt more determined than ever to discover the truth behind Jason’s murder. She had a feeling they might already know who had killed his father-in-law, although they had yet to prove anything.

49

49

For a short time everything seemed to be going well. Even her knee was less painful now she could rest her leg. But Ella knew she couldn’t stay with Christine indefinitely. Having arrived late on Friday afternoon, there had been little time for them to talk about much except practicalities like who was going to feed the baby, and where Ella and Lily would sleep. Christine had two bedrooms in her flat, the smaller of which barely had space for a bed. The original second bedroom had been partitioned into a small bathroom and a box room. Ella assured her hostess that she and Lily would be fine in the smaller of the two rooms, but Christine insisted on giving up her own bedroom for them. They spent more than an hour changing the bedding on Christine’s bed and carting junk from the box room into the living room so that Christine could sleep in the small second bedroom where a bed was concealed beneath piles of clothes, obsolete kitchen appliances, boxes of washing powder and cleaning materials, old framed photographs, a hoover, an iron and ironing board which she admitted she never used, along with all sorts of random bric-a-brac she had gathered over several years of living alone in the flat.

‘I don’t like to throw anything away,’ she explained. ‘You never know when you might need something.’