‘Upstairs. While I was out for a walk.’

‘Tell me.’

But Thea didn’t want to recount the whole story again. She’d had enough for one day, with Clovis turning out so unexpectedly different, and then her sister arriving out of the blue. ‘How long are you staying?’ she asked instead. ‘I still don’t understand why you came looking for me.’

‘School holidays, same as you,’ said Jocelyn astutely. ‘Every woman needs to escape for a bit. The whole thing is relentless otherwise. Thinking up amusements, wondering whether you’re doing enough to stimulate them, inventing treats that won’t break the bank. I don’t blame you for bunking off, even if poor Drew seems to have taken to his bed.’

‘What? You don’t mean that literally, I hope.’

Jocelyn had gone pink, and put a hand to her mouth. ‘No, no. It’s just the way he seemed so absent. Even when I finally got to talk to him, he wasn’t paying much attention.’193

‘But he told you where I was, didn’t he? And what I was doing.’

‘Yes. Forget I said anything. I came about Jessica, remember?’

Thea chewed her lip for a moment. Something wasn’t adding up – there was definitely a sense of being excluded from a secret known to everyone else in the family. And yet it was only what she deserved. If exclusion was going on, then she had wantonly done it to herself and could hardly complain if life carried on without her back home. And Jessica – was she keeping secrets from her mother as well? ‘So, what do you think I should know?’ she asked wearily.

‘Toni thinks Jess is drinking too much.’

The starkness with which this was said left no room for evasion or dismissal. Jessica had brought work troubles and boyfriend crises to Thea over the years, and shared in one or two of her encounters with violent crime – but not recently. Well into her twenties, the girl seemed focused and ambitious, with a promotion to the rank of sergeant imminently expected. ‘Oh,’ said Thea. ‘That’s the last thing I would have imagined.’

Alcohol had never been much of a factor in the Johnstone household, and since becoming adults and leaving home, none of them had taken to drink. The eldest sister, Emily, had got into trouble in a particularly dramatic fashion, but even she was now back to almost-normal life, enjoying her first grandchild and taking things quietly. One or two of Jocelyn’s offspring had been dragged home from wild teenage parties a time or two, but nobody worried too 194much about it. The suggestion that the sensible grown-up Jessica might take to drink was too surprising to process. ‘Would Toni recognise a drink problem when she saw it?’ she wondered.

‘I’m not sure. She is quite sensible these days – and she saw drunks when she was doing that hotel job. It was finding a cupboard full of bottles in the flat that really alarmed her. Whisky, gin, loads of wine. All tucked away behind other things.’