The young man blinked. For a moment she felt that he could read her mind, and felt her cheeks flush.

‘Okay. You’ll have to sign them out,’ he said. ‘You could have warned us.’

‘It’s okay, I’ll only be five minutes.’

With the keys in hand, Mel let herself in. The secretary’s in-tray showed an up-to-the-minute listing of which AWL properties were taken. Perfect. She had already driven past three of them before coming here. In each case the lights were off, so she assumed he wasn’t there. That left only five to do. She’d do the furthest property first. It was a secluded rural barn, just the place he’d take Vanessa to avoid being disturbed. Mel laughed. I’m going to disturb you alright.

She dropped the keys back with the salesman, and drove off at a ferocious speed.

Programming the satnav, Mel drove over the M4 and into Wiltshire. It was forty minutes later when the female voice told her to take a rural side road, which eventually became a track between two arable farms. In the distance she saw the building she was aiming for. The sales sheet said it was a charming nineteenth-century barn, with satellite Internet, wifi and all mod cons. But she had been there once before, briefly, and could testify that it was dirty and ill-kempt, with pigeon shit everywhere. They had been on their way out for a night at a country hotel while John was away on the nightshift at Mount Browne. Kyle had shown her the internal office, like a portable ticket booth, that he had created within the barn from flat-packs. He had also pointed out the barn had an illegal blue asbestos-lined roof. Completely impossible to lease, and it would cost tens of thousands to renovate. Kyle had been scathing, saying it was the most obscure and useless bit of Angie’s entire industrial property portfolio. She had come out of her divorce with the worst end of the deal. She had supposedly been awarded half the value, but her ex-husband must have bribed the surveyors to overvalue all these semi-derelict buildings, and not to notice the asbestos on this one. They had both laughed about Angie being duped. Already by then Mel had become enmeshed in scorning a woman she didn’t even know, simply because she was a rival.

‘I used not to be like that,’ she shouted, over Bach’s ‘Air on the G string’. ‘I used to be nice. He’s made me greedy, selfish and bitchy. I’m clingy and shallow. And jealous, even of my own daughter.’

There was a red Fiat that she didn’t recognise outside the barn. She hoped that she had not made a mistake and that it really would be him that was there, not some other tenant who had been given informal access. There was no window for him to see her from, but she was aware that the rough track would create tyre noise. She knew too that she must not underestimate him. She had no idea whether there was CCTV fitted on the barn. It would be typical of him to have done that. He was meticulous. Always meticulous.