Charlie saw Simon marching towards her while she was still climbing down from the chair.

‘What the fuck . . .’ he started to say, but his words were drowned out by Lizzie Proust who appeared between him and Charlie, dragging the Snowman behind her. ‘That was absolutely the best speech I’ve ever heard,’ she told Charlie. ‘Wasn’t it, Giles?’

‘No,’ said Proust.

‘It was. You were terrific!’ Lizzie hugged Charlie with one arm, keeping hold of her husband with the other. By the time she’d managed to struggle free, Charlie couldn’t see Simon any more.

‘I don’t think it was the best speech your intended has ever heard either,’ said Proust, giving her a wintry look.

‘Most people seemed to like it, sir.’ Charlie smiled resolutely. She wouldn’t let him ruin her mood, so recently improved. Her speech had been good. But now where was Simon? He couldn’t really be angry, could he?

The music came back on, louder than before, and a different CD: Wyclef Jean’s Carnival II. Charlie noticed Proust’s instant displeasure, and wondered fleetingly if he’d ever been open-minded even in his youth. She felt a hand close around her arm: Debbie Gibbs. ‘I wish I could laugh at myself the way you laugh at yourself,’ she said. Her eyes looked wet.

‘I can laugh at you if you want,’ said Charlie. Debbie shook her head, not getting the joke. You’re a cop, not a comedian, Charlie reminded herself.

Once Debbie had moved away, Olivia pulled Charlie to one side. ‘Mum and Dad were never hippies.’

‘Well, whatever they were, then—champagne socialists. People with wooden floors who go on CND marches and eat pasta a lot—but that would have taken too long to say. Much easier to summarise now Dad’s a golf bore.’

‘Don’t start, Char.’

‘Interested in his golfing stories, are you?’

During Olivia’s treatment for cancer, Howard Zailer had been fully involved. As much as Linda and Charlie were. It was when he’d retired that his horizons had started to narrow. By 2006, when Charlie’s name had been splashed all over the papers, he had been willing to talk to her only briefly about what she was going through; it wasn’t life-threatening, after all. Howard couldn’t be late for his day’s play, or, if it was evening when Charlie happened to ring, for a drinking session with his friends from the club. ‘I’ll hand you over to Mum,’ he said whenever she phoned. ‘She can fill me in later.’

‘You’ll have to forgive me if I’m determined to like my family in spite of their faults,’ Liv said huffily, looking Charlie up and down. ‘It’s not exactly an abundance of riches scenario, is it? I don’t have any relatives who aren’t a pain in the arse in some major way. I suppose you’d like me to cut all ties, take myself off to the pound to sit in a mesh-fronted cage until some perfect new family comes to claim me.’

Charlie decided it would be unwise to pursue the point.