It was no place to bring up a child – in an atmosphere like that. Children needed space, somewhere to run and play. They couldn’t spend their lives on tiptoe. All that ‘children should be seen and not heard’ crap had gone out of the window years ago. And it wasn’t just that. If anyone she had ever met was capable of violence – including violence against children – it was Lucy. She wouldn’t say this to anyone, because they would think she was mad, but living above Lucy felt like living next door to a child molester.

Her mind was made up on the train home from Scotland. They were going to have to move.

But Jamie refused to even think about leaving the flat. ‘If we do,’ he said, ‘we’ll be giving in to them. It’s what they want. We can’t quit.’ Or, ‘Once they get used to us living here they’ll probably stop harassing us.’ Or, ‘We can’t afford to move anywhere else.’

Well, that last excuse was bullshit. They could sell the flat and get a similar one somewhere else. Or they could sell the flat and buy a house outside London. They could find new jobs, make new friends. It wouldn’t be that difficult. That part of Jamie’s argument was easy to shoot down.

She knew Jamie didn’t really believe that the Newtons would get bored or accustomed to them and leave them alone. She had once tried to persuade herself of that, but now she knew she had been foolish, naive. And Jamie knew as well as her that things would only get worse.

So that left the real reason he didn’t want to move. Typical male shit. He didn’t want to be seen to give in, to quit, to wave the flag of surrender. As if leaving would make him less macho somehow. At first she had actually agreed with this point of view. She didn’t believe in being pushed around. She didn’t want to give Lucy and Chris the satisfaction of knowing they had won. But now things were different. They had the baby to think about. Kirsty had seen an image of death, heard the portentous caw of the crow.

They were going to move out. And if Jamie didn’t want to go with her she would go alone.

Chapter Twenty-one

Twenty-one

On his way home from posting the letter, Jamie saw Paul – just Paul’s head at first, then neck, shoulders, torso – coming up the steps from Chris and Lucy’s flat.

Jamie stopped in his tracks. He blinked hard, not quite believing what he was seeing. He felt like a husband who had just found his wife in bed with another man. Shocked. Betrayed.

He hurried up the path. Paul turned and saw him, a smile spreading across his face.

Jamie marched right up to him. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘What?’