‘I’m looking for a friend of mine,’ said Lesley. ‘This is her. Claire Milo.’ She got out the clearest photo of the blonde’s face. The caretaker looked it over, thrusting out his lower lip as he thought it over. ‘She does live here, right?’

He tapped the brass plate bearing the residents’ names. ‘Sure she does. Real nice lady. That’s her, C. Milo, right there.’

‘OK if I go on up?’

‘You’d be wasting your time.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Your friend’s stuff’s still here, but she ain’t. Last I saw of her, her daughter Suki – sweet girl – told me she was taking a vacation. Had a bereavement, I was told. Had some hard thinking to do and some things to sort out.’

‘A vacation to where?’ asked Lesley. She’d come all this way, and the Milo woman had gone somewhere else.

‘England. That’s what I heard.’

Fuck it.

134

134

On the morning of his father’s funeral, Connor rose early. He couldn’t sleep. He’d loved Josh so dearly that this was going to be a very hard day for him. Mixed in with his grief over losing his dad was something horrible, deeply distasteful. The thought that Dad had been playing away. He still could scarcely take it in. But the photos were concrete proof. And if Josh had been cheating, then he’d been more unhappy than any of them could ever have known. Connor hated the thought of that, but it was something he’d always been aware of at gut level. Josh had been looking for something else, something more than his wife, his family, could give him.

Connor showered, shaved, dressed and then sat at his kitchen table drinking coffee. Soon, he’d collect Aysha and go on over to Mum’s place in Henley and together they would attend the burial near Winchester. Josh would be laid to rest beside his Romany parents in the Flynn family plot.

It was still so hard to take in the fact that Dad was gone. Every time Connor allowed himself to dwell on it, he felt choked up, unable to function.

Connor glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was time. He straightened his black tie and checked his Hugo Boss suit was dust-free in the hall mirror; then he took a breath to calm himself, and left the flat.

It was awful. Winter was gripping the countryside. The day was black as Satan’s arse, cold rain swooshing across the graveyard and wind seeping into every exposed pore. Inside the church it was cheerless and the ceremony seemed to go on forever; outside, as the mourners assembled beside the family plot in readiness for Josh ‘Fearless’ Flynn’s burial, the sleety rain came down even harder.

Shauna seemed calm, but Aysha was in tears. Benedict was at her side, supporting her, holding an umbrella over her to shield her from the worst of the weather.