He looked down and pushed the earth around with the toe of his shoe, his inadequacy enveloping him. How could he explain it to her? Whenever he tried to sound out the reason in his head, it sounded pathetic, but the root cause was a mantra that had arisen from the ashes of his past: whenever I touch something special, it just seems to wither in my hands. In a world where nothing seemed real, Priest had found that people, especially lovers, eventually faded away. At least this way, Jessica would always stay real to him.

‘How are you?’ Priest asked, feebly.

For a horrible moment, he thought she might do what he felt he deserved and slap him across the face, but instead she released her hand from his arm, as if she had just realised, with embarrassment, that she was still touching him.

‘I’m doing better than perhaps I should be,’ she conceded.

‘Maybe we could start again?’

‘From which point? The point at which I was shown a picture of my brother impaled on a spike, or before that?’

He faltered, although he felt justified in doing so. ‘Starting again doesn’t necessarily have to mean going back to any particular point. Perhaps it’s about rebuilding what we have.’

‘Which is what exactly?’

‘I have absolutely no idea.’

At last, a statement he was sure of. He shouldn’t have stood her up, but maybe there was hope – maybe he could atone. He carried out a quick mental calculation. The trial started in ninety minutes. He had to travel halfway across London to the Strand and negotiate the plethora of cameramen lining the High Court entrance, which would take him to the point where the trial was scheduled to start, but Okoro’s patience would have worn thin way before then.

Inside his jacket pocket, his phone resumed its familiar, angry buzz.

‘Meet me tomorrow night,’ he said, his heart in his mouth. ‘Come over to mine. We can shut ourselves away from the world for an evening. I’ll attempt to cook you something. Do you like lemon sole?’

‘You’re asking me out on a date? At my father’s funeral.’ There was no trace of humour in her voice.

Priest shuffled his feet again. On reflection, he did seem to have set a record for inappropriate passes.

For a full agonising minute, she said nothing, but continued to stare at some imperceptible spot behind him. For every excruciating moment that passed a feeling of hopelessness set in until, finally, she nodded.

‘You’d better be there, Priest. Or God have mercy.’

Chapter 5

Chapter 5