The silence in here was heavy, as though the flat was all talked out. Sean and Liam got on really well. In any previous meal, she had been the odd one out, watching in pleasurable silence as her blond son held his own against the dark-haired Irishman.

Such a rapport could never have existed between Edward and Liam. Rhona had viewed the relationship Edward had with his other son first-hand. The son who’d been planned. The son he’d wanted.

Truth was, Edward didn’t really want a son as an individual. He wanted a younger version of himself, and he’d spent a lot of time trying to mould Jonathan in that model. Jonathan had rebelled, of course, and the result had been worse than anyone could have imagined.

Rhona hung up her coat and kicked off her shoes.

The door to the spare room was open. She glanced inside, but there was no Sean asleep there. She checked her own bedroom now, to find the same. Relaxing into the realization that she was alone, Rhona headed for the shower. She was hungry, ravenous in fact, but the biggest desire was to shed her body of the smell of that room.

Turning the setting up to the hottest she could handle, she stepped under the spray. At first she just let the water beat on her head and shoulders. Then she soaped every inch of her body and shampooed her hair.

Only once she could smell nothing but the scent of cleanliness did she emerge to towel herself dry. It always amazed her that a shower did not just clean the body, but also seemed to clear her mind as well.

Sauntering through to the kitchen, she noted that the slow cooker was still on and the aroma she’d caught on the stairs might just come from it.

A note on the table from Sean said ‘Call me!’ with no mention of Liam or expressions like ‘Where the hell were you?’

Rhona helped herself to a plate of vegetable curry and, grabbing a fork, headed for the sitting room. The shutters were closed, the lamps lit as though in welcome. Rhona put on the gas fire and, reclaiming the couch from Tom, stretched out on it with her plate on her knees.

After which, she purposefully thought of nothing until she had cleared her plate.

Depositing the plate in the dishwasher, she fetched her laptop and mobile and took them back through with her. Head clear now, hunger satisfied, her first decision was to text both Liam and Sean.

She began with Liam, explaining about the call-out and her extended stint with the body, together with an apology for forgetting what day of the week it was. If Liam had time maybe they could meet for a drink at the jazz club tomorrow night, otherwise he could get in touch next time he was in Glasgow.

It was strange, Rhona mused, how much easier it was to say things in a text, rather than face to face. As for Sean, she sent a similar excuse/apology and promised to make it up to him. What if she took him out to dinner at a restaurant of his choice, no expense spared?