The morning after her lunch with Veronica Eliot, Connie Masters woke feeling washed out and tired. She drove to Hexham to shop for food, but returned home without even stopping in town for coffee. Outside a newsagent’s in the main street there was a blown-up headline: TYNE VALLEY SOCIAL WORKER’S DEATH. THE INVESTIGATION CONTINUES. No link had yet been made to Elias Jones, but Connie thought it was only a matter of time before the press picked up on it, until they’d hunt her down again.

Alice had woken several times in the night, troubled by the old nightmares. She trailed listlessly round the supermarket, hanging on to Connie’s hand, and when they got home she fell asleep straight after lunch on the sofa in the living room, watching children’s television. Connie covered her with a quilt and let her sleep. In the quiet house, with the background sound of running water, she imagined herself back in the social-services office where she’d been based, trawling through the conversations she’d had with Jenny Lister in the months either side of Elias’s death. Trying to find an answer for the new murder, one in which she played no part.

Jenny’s room at work had been small. One wall was covered with drawings and paintings done by the children she’d placed into foster care. Pictures of smiling stick-children, a big pink heart. Molly loves Jenny. There were plants, living and flowering, not dead like the ones in the open-plan office shared by the rest of the team. Walking into Jenny’s room had been to step into a place of colour and civilization. They might talk there about misery, but Connie had felt it first as a place of sanctuary, then as a place for confession. And even as a child, she’d lied about her sins.

‘Tell me about Michael Morgan.’ Jenny had smiled in an encouraging way. It had been the supervision session after Morgan had offered to leave Mattie and the child. They’d been sitting in the comfortable chairs, facing each other across the tiny coffee table. Of course Jenny organized her room informally before staff meetings. She wasn’t one for the hierarchy of sitting behind a desk to talk to her team.

And Connie had blustered a little, reluctant to tell Jenny that actually she’d only really met the man twice. Once briefly when he’d just moved in, when she’d had the impression of stillness, intensity, that had led her to describe him as ‘weird’; and that last occasion when he’d offered to move away from the family. She’d deliberately chosen times to visit Mattie when he wasn’t there. Ostensibly thinking that Mattie might talk to her more freely if Morgan wasn’t around, but really because Connie was unnerved by him. When he was in the room she felt she had no control.