By the time she got to Notting Hill it was 8.30 p.m. A fat man stopped her as she emerged from the tube station. It was a cool evening but there was a thick glaze of sweat on his pale skin, lending him a luminous, waxy look. His belly, breasts, nose and chin all drooped down towards the ground, as if he were slowly melting. He wanted to know the way to the Prince Albert pub. When Tamsin gave him the directions, he asked her to repeat them; and then again, for a third time. Then she realised that he wasn’t lost at all: he was just keeping her talking in order to stare at her chest (admittedly very prominent today, under the tight grey wool of her dress) for as long as possible.

‘You’re sick,’ Tamsin snapped at him, and set off down Pembridge Road, feeling that all men everywhere were disgusting sex-obsessed perverts. Even Chris, lying maimed in his hospital bed, had sex on the brain! What she needed was alcohol and an ally. Tamsin stopped at a little off-licence to pick up two bottles of red and a packet of Camels. She would go home to her mother and they would smoke and they would drink and she would tell Roz everything, about her and Callum, about Chris, about the nightmare discovery she had just made at Denham Hall…

Pushing open the front door of Number 8, she was met by a delicious smell of Indian food. So her mother had ordered in curry. Tamsin was just about to call out in greeting when she heard voices in the kitchen: Roz was evidently not alone. She listened for a few moments. Now she could hear that the voices weren’t talking, not really. She stepped quietly through the hallway until she was just a few feet from the open kitchen door, still out of sight. They were murmuring and sighing and – that was unmistakable, that tiny, high-pitched sucking sound – they were kissing! Her mother’s mystery lover, at last! To Tamsin’s surprise – and even, she realised, disappointment – it was clear that this person was not a woman after all, but a man with a burry deep voice. But she was still curious. She cleared her throat loudly to alert them to her presence.

‘Hello, I’m back— ’ she called as she entered the kitchen.

Then she stopped.

‘No. No way.’ Tamsin heard herself start to laugh, a horrible dry humourless laugh. ‘Fuck. I don’t fucking believe this.’

She was already backing away as her mother came towards her. ‘Tamsin,’ Roz said lamely. ‘You’re meant to be in Denham.’

‘Tammy—’ said her father, stepping forward to join her mother.

But Tamsin was gone.

* * *

‘I’m so sorry, Tammy. You poor poor darling, I literally can’t imagine how ghastly that must’ve been for you.’

In desperation, Tamsin had called Serena; and in direct contravention of all her expectations, Serena was being lovely.