Pip felt her cheeks glow and she rolled her eyes. ‘You got me,’ she replied, giving him half a smile. ‘But it would be nice to have a catch-up too. Where do people drink these days?’

‘How about the Nag’s Head? Seven thirty suit?’

Pip nodded gratefully. ‘That’d be great,’ she said.

Pip spent most of the day daydreaming about what she should wear. It most definitely wasn’t a date with Jez – he had a girlfriend, and there was the whole thing with Dominic, still so new and raw – but she still wanted to look nice. Her lacklustre appearance had been pretty much the last thing on her mind recently and she had hidden herself away in jeans and baggy jumpers, but at the thought of seeing Jez it felt like a switch was flicked in her. She wasn’t sure she knew quite what she was feeling, feelings of any kind being so rare, but she wondered if it might be pride that made her want to look her best for him, or maybe something else more essential, a part of herself that she had lost sight of but was perhaps now flickering back into life.

But set against that was the idea that she didn’t deserve to look nice or enjoy herself, considering what she had done. How could she contemplate getting dressed up when the mother of the boy she had killed would probably never care about her appearance again?

In the end, she settled for jeans and a crisp white shirt. It was a neutral choice, neither particularly stylish nor broadcasting that she was making an effort, and in any event, it was unlikely that Jez would even notice.

Not wanting to draw her parents’ attention to her movements, she had intended to sneak out, leaving a note on the kitchen table as to her whereabouts but, with an unsurprising second sense, her mother appeared in the kitchen just as she was putting on her jacket.

‘Going out, love?’ she asked, her expression a mixture of curiosity and delight.

‘Just for a quick drink,’ replied Pip, hoping against hope that this would be an end to the questions but knowing that it wouldn’t be.

‘That’s nice. Who with?’

It was like going two rounds with the Gestapo sometimes. Pip knew it was perfectly reasonable for her mother to wonder where she was going, particularly when she had so rarely left the farm in the evening since her arrival, but constantly having to account for her movements made her feel claustrophobic and she resented the intrusion. She was tempted to lie, but that would only backfire on her. Better to be honest and ignore the raised eyebrows.

‘Just Jez,’ she said without meeting her mother’s enquiring gaze.

‘Oh,’ replied her mother simply, but Pip could hear the pleasure oozing from the single syllable. Her parents had always thought she’d have been better marrying a nice local boy instead of running off to London, and to be fair, it was starting to look like they might have been right.