George had come out of prison a changed man. Never a gregarious person, he had nonetheless been a cheerful type once. But he had returned to her a sullen and unhappy individual, with a meekness that bordered on humility. Except she sometimes thought it was all a front. All he had been able to do was his gardening. It was as if the inside of the house was meaningless now, and that only the shell was to be maintained in any way.

She sometimes thought that was just like George himself. He had an outer shell that he wore day in and day out, but inside he was empty.

Empty and frightened.

When the murders had started in Grantley she had been inclined to think it was him, but she knew it couldn’t be. George would never make a competent murderer. Everything he did just fell apart.

No, George was just a poor fool. But his outburst had proved to her that he did feel something. That he still looked on her as his wife.

The worst part of all the trouble that time had been the knowledge that he had been to a pornographic cinema. That, for some reason, had seemed worse to Elaine than the attack on the young girl.

A single fat tear careered from the corner of her right eye and snaked down her rounded cheek until she tasted the hot saltiness on her tongue.

Why had it all gone wrong? Where was the young girl who had waited so eagerly for her baby to arrive? When did she become a ridiculous middle-aged woman sneaking around to meet another man?

When, in God’s name, would all this end?

Kate left her house at seven in the morning. It was foggy, the air laden with the smell of early spring. As she unlocked her car, she felt a man’s presence and turned abruptly to face him. She thought it was Dan. Her mind had been so full of him all night, she had hardly slept. It was thinking about him and the lack of sleep that had driven her from home so early. She could not face Lizzy just yet.

She turned to look into the big moon face of Willy. She was startled, holding her hands to her chest instinctively.

‘I’m sorry to scare you, I just wanted a word. I won’t keep you long.’

He took Kate’s arm and walked her along the road to Patrick’s Rolls Royce. He opened the back and she sat inside. All her instincts told her not to be frightened, but she could not totally allay her fears. Willy started up the car and it rolled away noiselessly from the kerb. He put down the connecting window and began to speak.

‘I know a little place where we can have a bit of breakfast if you like.’