‘Fine, love. Just a little twinge.’ Before Petra could interject again, she ploughed on. ‘I can drop something off. Chicken soup, you know. Act like a mom should act.’

Petra couldn’t exactly explain the anger that was building up in her. She should feel lucky to be getting some TLC from her mother. Not everyone had that luxury. But Helena was currently annoying the shit out of her. Was this how she felt every time Petra fussed over her? ‘I’m fine. I have to go,’ she said, cutting the call before she said anything regrettable.

A few minutes later, a lean guy dressed in black jeans and polo neck like a young Steve Jobs pushed through the door. It took Petra a few moments to recognise him, and it was his dark curls that clued her in.

‘Hi, Freddie,’ she said. ‘Where’ve you been?’ Looked like he’d spent the week getting a makeover. ‘Is there a new dress code at Gravity’s End?’

He nodded at her without smiling, and scanned the lower level of the shop before walking wordlessly up the stairs. Petra followed him on the CCTV screen as he peered around every corner of the top floor, checking every section, as if looking for someone. There was nobody upstairs.

When he came down again, Petra said, ‘Are you looking for something? Or someone?’

‘Just you,’ he said, and his voice was a husk, just a functional sound played on a dry instrument. He sauntered around the main floor displays, selected a glass paperweight from Prague with a cast-iron rose set into it. He held the heavy sphere, turning it around in his hand, stretched his arm out in front of him—

‘Hey, what—’

—and dropped it onto the concrete floor. The smash shattered the air and time seemed to stop as the shards skimmed across the floor, shearing and reverberating like ice on a frozen lake.

‘—are you doing?’

Petra pushed up from the chair and took a few steps out from behind the counter; the look on Freddie’s face – blank, mean, emotionless; a shark’s expression – stopped her in her tracks. The black-shirt mayor character in Cabinet, the one she’d stumbled across attacking the woman in his office, came to mind.

As she hesitated, Suki was rushing out of the back office, phone to ear, and also jarred to a halt as she took in the scene. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What’s the matter with you, Freddie?’ Petra asked.

Freddie said nothing, only turned to the door, locking it from the inside and flipping the closed sign outwards. He advanced towards them. Petra stood rooted behind the counter and Suki braced herself in front of it. ‘Don’t you dare come a step closer.’

Freddie finished his pace, and then stopped. ‘I’ve got a message for you.’

He was looking at Petra, but it was Suki who spoke for her. ‘Yeah? About what?’