‘You’ve killed someone,’ Joe screams. Cathy and Frannie sit in shocked silence while his words echo around the Verona countryside.

Cathy looks at her, now that she is close enough to see her properly. She was wrong about the expression. There aren’t any tears, no red nose.

Joe begins fussing with the car, shining his torch light on to it and rubbing at it.

‘I want to go back,’ Frannie says, closing her eyes and looking heavenwards. ‘I want to go back to when it never happened.’ The tears come now, leaking sideways out of each eye. ‘Please let me go back.’ She looks straight upwards, into the navy-blue sky, scattered with stars by God’s careless hand.

‘I can’t,’ Cathy says, her voice hoarse, thinking of little Paul, innocent Paul, who loves cheese sandwiches, Party Rings, and his mother.

They sit in silence for a few seconds.

‘We have to bury his body,’ Frannie says. She wipes at her cheek and leaves another bloodstain across it. It’s crusted and dry. She meets Cathy’s eyes in the gloom. ‘We have to bury the body.’

4.

Now

Jason’s Office, early February, 5.00 p.m.

It’s the coldest February since records began, apparently. It’s late afternoon, in Birmingham city centre. Corporation Street is a white-out, the air dense with a thick winter mist, the pavements frosted, scuffed in places with black footprints.

It’s just before five. Paul will be at nursery until half past, then to Mum and Dad’s, where he will be handed back to me without fanfare, without conversation, since they found it all out.

A tram goes by as I walk up Corporation Street. It’s lined with trees that haven’t had leaves on them for months. The tail end of winter that seems to drag on like a flatline.

I press the buzzer that perfectly fits the shape of my fingertip and soon I’m on the second floor and sitting opposite Jason, who has his legs crossed at the knee. He has made us both tea, which surprised me.

I cradle mine, even though it is burning my hands. Outside his cocooned room with his two electric heaters and his books, I can hear the muted conversation of a colleague of his, and I’m momentarily reminded that this isn’t Jason’s life: it’s only his job, something he leaves in the evenings and doesn’t think about until the next morning. Maybe.

‘How’s your week been?’ he says to me. He has dark hair and a greying beard, like a wolf. He fiddles absent-mindedly with the earring he wears in his left ear. This is how Jason operates. Heavy, professional conversations dressed up casually. He doesn’t believe much in convention. He chews gum in our sessions and makes too many drinks, leaving teaspoons scattered on the desk where his illegal kettle, as he calls it, lives. But his brain is lightning-fast. When I mention small details, his eyes narrow, and, a little while later, I find that we are discussing them again, going in at a new angle that he has orchestrated without my knowing.