‘Now then. Don’t take on so.’ The man took a step forward, and for the first time the boy saw that he had a dog with him, a huge black dog, covered in shaggy black fur. It steamed slightly in the cold morning air and looked at him with yellow-brown eyes. ‘You know, I had completely forgotten the Reaves had a boy, but there you are. There you are, after all.’

The boy opened his mouth and closed it again. The Reaves, the Reaves were his family, and they would be angry with him.

‘And what a creature you are.’ The boy winced, remembering how his mother had called him brute and beast and filth, but the man sounded pleased, and when the boy looked up, he was shaking his head gently. ‘You’re to come with me, I think, my little wolf. My little barghest.’

The dog opened its mouth, letting loose a long pink tongue. After a moment it began to lick the blood from the grass.

2

Cold and tired and in no mood for awkward pleasantries, Heather forced a polite smile on her face. A moment later she reconsidered, and just as forcibly removed it – smiling too much at a time like this would be seen as inappropriate, and she was already well aware that she was about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool.

‘Thanks, Mr Ramsey, for waiting in for me. It’s very kind of you.’

Mr Ramsey glowered at her.

‘Well, if you had been around here more often, I dare say you would have had your own set of your mother’s keys.’ He sniffed, communicating in one bronchial sound everything he thought of Heather Evans. ‘Your poor mother. It’s … well, it’s all very sad, I’m sure. Very sad indeed. Just a terrible situation all round.’

‘Yeah, it’s definitely that.’ Heather hefted the keys in her hand, looking at the towering bushes and trees that hid her mother’s house from the road. ‘Don’t let me keep you, Mr Ramsey.’

He stiffened at that, the pouches under his eyes turning a slightly darker shade of grey. She kept quiet, letting the silence spool out into the overcast morning, and soon she could see him wondering if he shouldn’t give her a piece of his mind. But in the end, he turned and marched back to his own house.

Heather stood for a moment longer, taking a deep breath and listening to the quiet. Balesford was a place of residential sprawl, of detached houses and high fences, of eerily similar faces and the same accent everywhere you went. It was technically London, nestled as it was on the very border of Kent, but a very anaemic strain of it – no colour, no life.