‘Angel?’ Tom was grinning at her, tapping her hand with a teaspoon. ‘You in there? Mum’s talking to you.’

‘Sorry! What?’ asked Angel.

Lil heaved a sigh. ‘Look. Just say if you don’t like the idea, I won’t be offended.’

‘Yes, you bloody will,’ said June.

‘Shut up, June. No I won’t.’ Aunt Lil shot her sister a look and then turned to Angel. ‘What I thought was this. This silly business of alternating weeks at Dora’s grave. What I would like is, can we all go together, at the same time, as a family? Put some flowers on Mum and Dad’s graves, and Alec’s, and Dora’s too, what d’you think, Angel?’

‘If you’re not too busy boffing that copper,’ said June.

‘June!’ said Lil.

Angel gave June a look of sad, sweet tolerance. Then she said to Aunt Lil: ‘You know what? That would be nice. I’d like that.’

166

‘So what’s the deal then?’ asked Tom when they were at the graveyard.

‘What?’ asked Angel, watching as Lil and June cleared out the old dead flowers from the urn on Dora’s grave and carefully replaced them with fresh red roses.

‘You and the copper. What’s going on there then? Only he hasn’t phoned, he hasn’t been back, what’s going on?’

‘Well, you’re a man. You know how that goes,’ said Angel, wishing he’d shut up. She was trying to blank it all out, the certainty that Farmer was repulsed by her now, the fear whenever there was a knock on the door.

‘What, you fallen out already?’ Tom looked at his cousin with curious eyes. ‘And don’t tell me it was a one-night shag, because I know you wouldn’t go for that.’

June was telling Lil she wasn’t putting the bloody roses in right, they were all lengths, all crooked. ‘Oh shut up, June,’ said Lil, and carried on. ‘That bandage round your head? I think it’s pressing on your brain.’

‘You shut up,’ said June.

‘I might throttle you with it in a minute,’ said Lil, but she was smiling.

‘Tom? Listen. I had to tell him something,’ said Angel in a low voice. ‘And . . . it disgusted him.’

‘What?’ Tom was staring at her in disbelief.

‘There are things about me you don’t know.’ Angel gulped and her face twisted in pain. ‘The fact is, he could be coming to arrest me any day now. Over something that happened years ago.’

‘Christ, Angel!’ Tom looked horrified. ‘What the hell did you do?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s the past, it’s dead.’

‘OK. All right.’ Tom stuffed his hands in his pockets. His expression was anxious. ‘If I can help at all . . .’

‘You can’t. But thanks.’

Now Lil and June had moved on to their parents’ graves, and that of Alec, Lil’s dead husband. Tom and Angel hung back.

‘Look,’ said Tom, ‘I’m coming back to work at the club on Monday, so later this afternoon I thought we could move back over to the flat, what do you think? Before Mum and Auntie June drive us both up the frigging wall? I love ’em to bits, but I don’t think I could stand another Antiques Roadshow.’