Dave was kneeling on the floor doing something with pipes. ‘They’re there, look.’ He ducked his chin at a pair of boxes standing in a corner. ‘Came yesterday.’

‘Can I look?’ Without waiting for permission, she tiptoed across the gritty floor and pulled open the upper box. The tiles were tightly packed, only their edges showing. She extracted one and examined it. ‘Bit boring,’ she judged. It was pale blue, with ripples of white and a darker blue. ‘Are there any jazzy ones to intersperse with these?’

‘Nope,’ said Dave. ‘They’ll look great when they’re up. Soothing. Who wants a jazzy bathroom?’

‘Me,’ said Thea. ‘I did our bathroom in red and black when we moved.’

‘Lovely,’ said Dave, with undisguised irony.

‘Well, it’s up to Tabitha, obviously,’ Thea conceded. ‘I’ll get out of your way now.’

‘Going out again?’ asked Sid. ‘That woman found you, I presume.’

‘She did, thanks. And she drove me back here. It’s at least half a mile to the entrance to the business park.’

‘So it is,’ said Sid, as if he’d already told her that.

‘I’m not going out again just yet. I might go for some shopping later on.’266

She went downstairs, once again feeling disgusted with herself. What was the matter with her, that she was always so self-obsessed and judgemental? No wonder she had hardly any friends and that people kept secrets from her. She was in her mid-forties, and what did she have to show for her life? All she did was upset people and ignore their suffering. For the hundredth time, she yearned for her dog. Hepzie would cuddle up to her and reassure her that she was at least loved by one living creature. The unswerving loyalty of a spaniel was cheaply won, she knew, but it felt no less wonderful for that. And Drew still loved her, she supposed. He’d known what she was like when he married her, and seemed to find it perfectly acceptable. They’d weathered a crisis a few months earlier, when it had seemed for a while that they might be irrevocably headed in different directions, and since then life had been quite calm – at least on the surface. Now he, like Jessica, had a secret from her. Something that Stephanie and Timmy knew about, which made it worse.

Detective Constable Caz Barkley was like an all-seeing recording angel, confronting Thea with her shortcomings. ‘You’re her mother,’ she had said, as if that spelt out every duty, every move and thought and feeling that Thea should be acting on. Simple, had been the implication. Just do what you know has to be done and stop being such a prat.

So she texted her daughter again, slowly formulating a message she hoped would sound concerned and supportive without overdoing it. ‘Good to talk yesterday. You seemed a bit stressed. I’m here if you want to chat.’ 267Was there anything more she could say or do? A direct phone call would obviously be better, but Jessica was a working police officer, apparently extremely busy, and would not welcome sentimental conversations with her mother in the middle of a working day. The media had given considerable coverage to the under-resourced state of the police force and the frustrations that resulted. Too many unsolved crimes, piling up case by case, with nobody available to give them due attention. One bold chief constable had complained that the media themselves made it a lot more difficult, by inciting public hysteria over a handful of prominent crimes, which then had to be given an unfair share of police time, to satisfy the baying mob. He didn’t say ‘baying mob’, but it was clear that that was what he meant. The current obsession with pangolins was a case in point, with Merseyside one of the hot spots. Shipping containers had to be searched for smuggled animal parts, in all the major ports.