I took the children home the next day. There was nothing for us here except immediate danger and I couldn’t see James again until next week. I knew I’d never work for Higham; I feared I might not work again at all right now. I was exhausted by everything and utterly confused; unsure which way to turn.

I’d spent hours making calls – and frighteningly, I’d found the same story all over town. Ex-colleagues weren’t answering; no one was hiring because of the ‘global downturn’; no one was posting abroad. Higham’s name resounded round my head; somehow it seemed his tentacles had crept into my life and were strangling it. I could only think that he was punishing James and me for knowing Dalziel – and I’d always known that I would pay for my mistake. I just didn’t realise the banker would claim everything at once.

In the past when things had got tough in any area of my life, I’d run. I’d follow a story until it unfolded as far as I could take it. If I was unhappy or anxious, I’d bury it beneath work. I’d jump on a plane, I’d live out of a suitcase. I was addicted to moving on. Everything that happened to me at college had shaped me, made me reckless in a way I hadn’t been naturally. Later, when I found that I was pregnant with Alicia, I weaned myself off the danger and took different assignments; I stopped running and settled down to domestic bliss.

But now I wanted to run again. I wanted to scoop up my children and disappear them to safety. I was facing the truth head-on and it was this: I wanted out of me and James, I wanted out of the Cotswolds and, for the first time, London was no longer an option. I’d loved it for so long, but now I was tired of the buzz and adrenalin of a city that suddenly seemed mired in corruption. I craved sanctuary, although I knew now it didn’t lie with anyone apart from myself and my family.

But for now, our little village would have to suffice. Jen and I hugged goodbye outside her flat.

‘You be careful, Rose. No more funny business,’ she made me promise, and we set off for home.

‘Cor, who’s been eating garlic?’ Alicia wrinkled up her nose and opened her window. ‘It smells.’

‘There’s a garlic in Doctor Who,’ Freddie said solemnly. ‘A bad garlic what will explode you.’

‘Dur,’ Alicia said. ‘Dalek, dummy, not garlic.’

‘It’s not, Mummy, is it, it’s a garlic.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Is.’

‘Isn’t.’