Maeve skirted a corner, scraping the kerb with her wheel. ‘What a life! My son’s locked up till time immemorial, and now I find out that my children don’t trust one another. Well, you know what they say, don’t you? You live and learn.’

Mario grinned. ‘We trust one another, Mum; it’s just that none of us really trusts Stephen.’

Maeve shook her head. ‘It’s a terrible thing to say, I know, but I don’t entirely trust him myself. Even as a child, he had a way with him. Oh, you wouldn’t understand. ’

Mario put his hand gently on to his mother’s arm. ‘I understand more than you think, Mum.’

Maeve sighed. Smiling gently to herself, she said, ‘I suppose you do, Mario, I suppose you do.’

They drove home to Canning Town in silence.

It was late evening when Alan and Donna pulled into a Bed & Breakfast outside Edinburgh. Taking their bags from the boot, Alan rang the doorbell of the tall four-storey house. It was answered by a small dark-haired woman in her thirties.

‘Can I help you?’

‘We need two rooms for the night, please. Breakfast in the morning and maybe a sandwich now to be going on with.’

Alan’s voice was different, more cultured, and Donna stood in the shadows of the long drive, watching him in surprise.

‘I can manage that much, laddie. Away in.’

The woman opened the door wider and Alan entered. Donna followed him slowly. They had hardly spoken for nearly six hours, stopping once at motorway services to eat what passed for shepherd’s pie and tasted like shepherd’s socks.

The woman showed them into a sitting room containing a small sofa, two occasional tables, and a portable TV. The walls were painted oatmeal colour, and along one of them stood a metal holder, full of different pamphlets about Scotland and the highlands. It smelt of Mr Sheen and stale food.

‘Sit down and I’ll bring you in a pot of tea and something to eat. I have a wee bit of bannock outside, could you fit that in, maybe?’

Alan smiled. ‘Anything. We’re starving. What a lovely place you have here.’

The small woman glowed with happiness at the compliment and bustled out of the room.

‘This is hardly what I expected, I must say.’

Donna’s voice felt rusty through lack of use and nervousness. Since the argument earlier on there had been a tension between them that she knew would now be hard to break down.

Alan shrugged. ‘We don’t want to attract any kind of attention. This will do for what we want. It’s clean and out of the way. I hope the tea’s all right, I could murder a cup right now.’

Donna opened her bag and took out her cigarettes. Alan watched her light one, amazed that she could perform the act with such natural grace.