‘Joe,’ Frannie says. There is something light in her voice. Joe suspects she is steering the conversation away from Rosie, and away from Cathy’s guilt that hangs between them, unspoken.

‘What?’ he says.

‘Do you know you’ve come out in your fucking slippers?’

Joe glances down. Jesus. He wore them the whole evening without realizing. ‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Is this old age?’

‘Definitely,’ Frannie says. Cathy, Frannie and Joe get back in the car together and leave. ‘Don’t forget your pipe,’ Frannie says to him when they reach their road, their white cottages glowing like three lighthouses in the distance. Joe closes his eyes in pleasure. It doesn’t have to happen to them. They can still laugh, they can still have fun, they can still love each other, even in the darkness.

38.

Now

First Day of Trial R. v. Plant

‘All right, then,’ Jason says to me fourteen days later, though you wouldn’t know it. The same blank, shallow skies. The same brown spindly trees. Late March looks like December too, it turns out. Another month has zipped by, another month of estrangement from every member of my family. Until today.

We’re standing outside Birmingham Crown Court. He has a proper suit on, even though on the way over here I caught a glimpse of his pink socks as we walked.

‘Ready?’ he says. He won’t let on, but I think he is tired, his beard greyer than when we first met last year.

The door to the courthouse is dark wood, imposing, exactly like the police station in Verona. I stare at it, at the defendants and lawyers coming and going. Juries, judges.

‘You’re listed for ten,’ Jason says in the foyer. His breath smells tarry, of coffee. Lawyer’s breath, he once joked in that base way of his.

‘Will it be awful?’ I say in a low voice to him. I’ve tried to be an adult throughout this. From the police station in the middle of the night, to all the rest of it. The unfurling of what I did in Verona to now. But I can’t, not today. Not now it is upon us.

‘Yes,’ Jason says, and I like his honesty.

‘Damn,’ I say, an attempt at humour which falls flat. Jason leans a hand against the stone building. ‘You do this all the time,’ I add.

‘Not too many high-profile trials, to be fair,’ he says. He looks directly at me as he flares his lighter, a little tick he has.

‘What do you want to happen?’ I say. Another click of the lighter. A little blue-and-yellow ball of flame appears, like magic.

Jason doesn’t seem taken aback by the question. He’s in only a suit, no coat. It’s well cut, the sleeves finishing precisely at his wrists.

‘Justice,’ he says eventually. ‘The prosecution do their bit. The defence do theirs. And then what happens in the middle – the judge, the jury – that’s the justice part, isn’t it? The bit in the middle.’