The builders seemed to be hard at it when she returned to the house. She went round to the back garden and observed an obvious change in the stacked boxes and materials that had been there. As far as she could tell they were installing the dishwasher already. But there was no sign of the new window that had to be put in before the missing wall could be built and a new back door provided. She found herself impatient for better security, mentally rehearsing a whole new set of reassurances for Drew that evening.106

For no reason at all, she decided to see if the online Scrabble website was still there. It had been four years or more since she last participated in a game and she supposed she would have to start again with a low ranking since there was no way she could remember the password she’d used. It was, though, still the same computer, and when she found the site buried in her lengthy ‘favourites’ list, it sprang into life as if nothing had changed at all. Everything was exactly as it had always been, including her username (thewit, which was short for Thea and Witney) and the last place she’d achieved on the score chart.

With a sense of reverting to an earlier self, she clicked on someone called wozz0855 and was soon immersed in a fast game. She found herself recalling obscure words like qoph and trez, baju and qanat and cheerfully placed her tiles to spell fulmine on a triple word. When the game was over, and her ranking had jumped a few points up, she opted to observe a high-rating game, where almost every word was at least six letters in length, and the points scored were astronomical. It was hard to believe these were real human beings, rather than robots, but she admired their skill just the same. The idea that she might actually be learning something removed any lingering sense of guilt at indulging in such a time-wasting activity. What else should she be doing, anyway, she wondered. Nobody needed her to go anywhere, even if she could have done. A bus trip to Cirencester and back was the height of her ambition until released from this very ambivalent commission.107

Her mobile came to life as she was still wondering what to do. ‘Mrs Slocombe? Cirencester constabulary here. We understand you’re expecting us to call you about the fatality under your roof yesterday?’

‘Not exactly my roof, but yes, I knew you were going to want to talk to me.’

‘Can you come in, then? Do you know where we are?’

‘I do, yes. But I haven’t got any transport. Do you want me to get the bus?’

‘Um … hang on a second …’ There was a muttered exchange and then he came back. ‘We’ll send somebody for you. Give us twenty minutes.’

‘All right, then.’

But within ten minutes, the same person had called back to say they thought there would be more to be gained by Thea escorting a couple of officers to the place where she first met the deceased. That being so, it would have to wait a little while. ‘Can we say two o’clock?’