Driving north, she’d thought she might call in to see her hippy neighbours for an hour to wind down. They were always welcoming. There’d likely be a pan of soup on the range and some of the home-brew that was a more effective relaxant than anything a doctor would prescribe. Now she couldn’t face the idea of wrapping herself up in waterproofs and paddling through the mud. Instead she lay in the bath listening to a gloomy play on the radio, then changed into the faded tracksuit she wore instead of pyjamas in the winter.

Because she had the idea of soup firmly in her mind, she went in search of some and found a tin at the back of the larder that must have been there since Hector was still alive. Oxtail. His favourite. Heating it in a small pan, the smell brought him vividly to life. Hector, big and bullying, picking away at her confidence. Blaming her, she thought now, for being alive when her mother was dead. But what sort of parent would Vera have made if she’d had the chance to have children? Crap, she thought. She’d have been crap too. Much worse than Connie, or Jenny Lister, or even Veronica Eliot.

There was a small room at the back of the house that she used as an office. Piles of paper that she had to climb over to get in, a computer that would soon be fit for a museum. She fired it up and went to make a cup of tea while it chugged into life. It still hadn’t quite made it by the time she returned with her mug and a packet of chocolate digestives. She had a quick memory of the child doctor who’d sent her to the health club to get fit, imagined her disapproval, then dismissed it. Digestives were wholewheat, weren’t they? Healthy enough.

There was time for her to eat three biscuits before her email account was displayed on the screen. She opened the message from the scientist who’d been looking at the scraps of paper found in the bonfire burning in the garden at the Shaw house. Vera had asked Karen about the bonfire during the first interview in the neighbours’ house. ‘Did you or Derek light it before you went to work?’ It had seemed odd to Vera even then. Bonfires were for weekends, when you had the time to keep an eye on them. And Karen had looked at her as if she were mad, obviously had no idea what she was talking about. The bonfire had been nothing to do with her or Derek.

Vera had persisted. ‘Danny then? Did he help you out in the garden sometimes?’

At that, Karen had shaken her head sadly. ‘Danny didn’t really do helping. In the garden or anywhere else.’