I’m halfway down the stairs when I’m paged to attend an emergency cardiac tamponade. I text Stacey to let her know I’ll be there as soon as I can and head down to the Emergency Department. It’s only ninety minutes later, when the crisis is under control, that I realise I forgot to press send.

I erase the redundant message and text a new one.

Held up at work. On my way.

Three grey dots appear, and then disappear. I wait a few moments but Stacey doesn’t reply.

I’m reversing my car out of its space when my mobile pings again with an incoming text.

Too late now.

chapter 59

stacey

Stacey meant every word of her promise to Millie Downton. She managed to spin the video Millie leaked online to her advantage, but the damage has been done: she’s back under the media spotlight just when she most needs it to move on. She has no wish to go toe-to-toe with Millie again. She’s enjoyed the hero-worship from Millie’s son – if only her boy, Archie, was as charismatic and enterprising – and taken no small degree of pleasure from Millie’s obvious irritation, but he’s not worth incurring her mama-bear wrath. The woman is a psychotic tigress when it comes to her children.

Most mothers are. It’s not something Stacey’s ever really understood.

So when she comes up from the cellar and finds Peter peering in through the heavy glass front door on Monday afternoon, she’s not pleased. The boy can keep secrets – he’s certainly proven that – but she doesn’t want to give Millie any excuse to resume hostilities.

On the other hand, she doesn’t want him telling his mother what he knows either.

So she lets him in, and feeds him Coke and ice-cream before texting Millie to come and collect him.

‘I told you this had to stop,’ she tells Peter, putting the tub of Ben & Jerry’s back in the freezer. ‘No more coming over here unannounced. Your mother doesn’t want you to see me. She thinks I’m a bad influence.’

Peter grins. ‘That’s funny.’

Stacey doesn’t smile back. It isn’t funny. It isn’t funny at all. But she certainly appreciates the irony: a freckle-faced ten-year-old boy and a thirty-eight-year-old grown-ass professional woman – of course people will assume she’s the bad influence.

Her coffee has gone cold, and she pours it down the sink. Instead of draining, the coffee pools in the bottom, lifting small fragments of onions and peas on a tide of black caffeine. Stacey reaches beneath the sink for the plunger to clear it.

‘Harper’s going back home tomorrow,’ Peter says as she pumps the plunger.

‘I’m sure your mother must be relieved,’ Stacey says.