Cover

Dedication

For Louise, as always

Chapter One

January 2020

Angela Blanchard was surprised to see her husband’s car backing up the drive towards the house at four o’clock in the afternoon, while it was still light. The big white Volvo, sporting the distinctive tangled blue and green arrows logo of his employer, Aqua Western Ltd, rolled right up to the garage door. She put the kettle on. Normally he wouldn’t be home until five, except on a Friday. But today was Tuesday. Usually she would hear his cheerful whistling as he approached the door. The kicking off of the work boots in the porch, if he’d been on site, greeting the cat which rolled over on her back to have her tummy rubbed. And, at the end of every week, the banging out of the car mats against the wall, to get the mud off. It was a fixed routine.

But today he came straight in wearing his boots, dumped his briefcase on the hall table, ignored Felix, who was miaowing by the door, and clumped straight upstairs without saying hello. Most unlike him. She followed him, calling from the foot of the stairs.

‘Are you all right, Ozzy?’ she called. Lumps of mud flecked the stair carpet. Angela made allowances. She was an understanding woman. He must be stressed about something.

There were mumbled replies. He was fine, apparently. Clearly not true, but no doubt he’d tell her in his own time. As she waited, the rising roar of the electric kettle seemed to mark her husband’s blood pressure. Ozzy was already bustling from his home office with a couple of big file folders and his laptop. She squeezed to one side on the stairs as he thundered down, arms loaded.

‘Do you want a cuppa?’ she called after him.

‘Fine for the moment, thanks.’ He disappeared out to the garage for a few minutes. Angela heard the sound of the car boot slamming, and then he hurried back inside.

‘Ozzy, what’s the matter? Do you have to go back to work?’

‘There’s a bit of a flap on. A project crisis.’

She assumed that meant yes. ‘The Winchester to Havant phase two again?’ She was proud to be able to hold up her side of abstruse water engineering conversations, learning the names and techniques, taking an interest. Accommodating the technicalities. One time she had gone to lunch with Jill, and given her a five-minute overview of the ongoing problems with the narrow-bore deep reach pump, whose failure to reach technical spec on overcast days had been holding up WinHav II, as it was known. Jill, who worked part-time with Angela at the local pharmacy, was impressed but baffled. Angela had her explanation. ‘It’s my job to help him get stuff off his chest.’ She explained that it was one of the reasons for the success of their twenty-seven-year marriage. To listen and pretend to understand.