The lizard moved, its tongue shooting out. One cricket down, three to go. Milly shuddered. She detested lizards and always avoided going down to the zoo that Dad and Harlan loved so much, where the bigger ones were. The snakes there revolted her. There were boas down there big enough to swallow you whole. The caimans in the big central pool had grown and now they were large as adult crocodiles, and there were warning notices up all over the place. DON’T FEED THE CAIMANS. IF YOU HAVE TO HANDLE A YOUNG CAIMAN, WEAR STEEL-REINFORCED GLOVES.

Well, she was never going to handle one of those damned things. They might look cute when they were tiny, but they were nothing but fucking predators, weren’t they? There was something ancient and intensely cold about them that made her stay well away.

She pulled out the third box file: it would be more of the same, she knew it. Harlan had an obsessive streak. She flipped the lid open and stopped dead, staring in surprise. It wasn’t about the pets. There were no files inside. There was just an old cassette tape machine, a cheap ALBA one, complete with a plug-in lead. Why the hell would Harlan have an old thing like this, when Charlie bought him nothing but the best and the latest gear?

Milly pressed the OPEN button; there was a tape inside.

‘Well that’s odd,’ she said out loud. She crossed the room and took another peek out of the window. No change down there. She removed the tape deck from the file and found the nearest socket and plugged it in. Then she pressed PLAY but it wouldn’t, it was obviously at the end of the tape. She pressed REWIND and it spun back. Clicked when it reached the beginning. Again, she pressed PLAY. There was silence for a while, and then . . .

Oh fuck . . .

All the hairs on the nape of her neck stood up.

It was a baby, crying. A baby she knew.

Milly slumped down onto Harlan’s bed in disbelief.

God, what the hell was this?

She was listening to baby Jake, crying.

68

Summer began to fade into autumn. The thing between Milly and Nipper drifted on.

‘I’m so pleased I’ve got him,’ Milly was always saying of her hulking great boyfriend, as if trying to convince herself. If Milly was pleased, that was fine with Belle, even though she personally thought that Nipper was a knuckle-dragging moron.

Meanwhile, Harlan wanted to be Belle’s boyfriend, but that door remained firmly closed.

‘He’s a creep,’ said Belle to anyone who would listen, including Milly.