“A full review. I’ll email. I wrote it all down earlier this week. And the consultant guy already spoke to me.” Laura paused, as if she had something else to say about Mark Daubery, but she did not say it. Walden could guess.

There was a moment or two of rather awkward silence.

“Are you all right?” Walden asked.

“I was expecting it,” said Laura, which wasn’t an answer.

“You did your best,” Walden said. “You did absolutely everything you could. You certainly saved my life, when you came back into the incursion for me. I don’t want you to go away thinking you failed here.”

“Saffy,” said Laura, “I’m not in the mood.”

“I apologise,” Walden said. “I’m afraid I don’t have normal conversations very often.”

Laura turned and looked right at her for the first time since Walden had entered the room. “This is depressing,” she said. “I promise I don’t want a shoulder to cry on. I’m not really a crier. But look, it’s half term. The kids aren’t around to see us, and I could really use a beer. Pub?”

“Honestly, it was you or me,” Laura said later. “We both know it.”

She was into her second pint, while Walden was nursing a rather expensive gin cocktail. They were splitting a bowl of pork crackling as they relaxed in a booth in the corner of the Red Lion. They weren’t the only customers, but it was close: the Lion had traditional trappings, but it was really a quiet country gastropub now, the sort of place that served pork crackling in locally sourced artisanal crockery. It had been a long time since this slightly wonky building was the actual social heart of Chetwood village.

“No regulars,” Laura said. “I don’t trust a pub with no regulars.”

“Much too expensive to have regulars,” said Walden. “But they do better in term time—laying in cases and cases of Bacardi Breezers for Year Thirteen on Saturdays. We do ask them to be strict about checking IDs and cutting people off.”

“They would be anyway,” Laura said. “Nothing but a mob of tipsy eighteen-year-olds, alongside the people who can afford houses around here—what a crowd!”

“It was you or me,” said Walden, “but I’m still sorry it was you.”