She blipped the throttle and overtook the car transporter, noting a dark BMW with tinted windows behind her do the same. Now she thought of it, the car had been in her mirrors for several miles. Fairchild’s Range Rover came to mind. It too had smoked-glass windows. Silva dismissed the coincidence and accelerated up to eighty. She rode in the fast lane for several miles, trying to clear the cobwebs and confusion from her mind. When she slowed for some congestion ahead she glanced in her mirrors again. The car was still there. For a moment a chill slipped inside her leather jacket, but then she threaded her way down between two lines of vehicles and left the BMW stuck in the stationary traffic.

When she reached Swindon she turned off the motorway and headed south to the town of Marlborough. Her mother’s house lay a few miles outside the town on the banks of the young river Kennet. A lane led away from the main road and down to the river where a brick weir-keeper’s cottage stood next to a foaming pool of white water. A picket fence surrounded the front garden, the grass within long and in need of a cut. Silva kicked down the stand on the bike, pulled off her helmet and listened to the rumble of the weir. As a child she’d grown used to the sound, the constant white noise so pervasive that when she’d moved away she’d found it difficult to sleep.

She slipped the keys into the lock and the door opened against a mound of letters, free newspapers and junk mail. She pushed the pile to one side and closed the door.

Silence. A waft of air filled with the scent of jasmine and coffee beans. Silva inhaled and stepped into the living room. Shelves crammed with books either side of a fireplace. A sofa with a throw and an abundance of cushions. A Turkish carpet on the floor. A plant in the window bay with leaves brown from lack of water. She dropped into the sofa and pulled a cushion to her body and hugged the softness. Remembered back to when she’d lived in this house as a teenager. Remembered the arguments and fights and the way she and her mother had rubbed each other up. Parent and child. Back then the place had seemed claustrophobic and they’d been under each other’s feet with not enough space, Silva’s unsuitable boyfriends matched against her mother’s equally unworthy lovers. Later, when Silva was older and more world wise, the relationship had matured. Mother and daughter. Friends.

Silva wiped away tears, aware she was crying not solely for the loss of her mother. The visit to her father had crystallised the absence that had been there all along. She’d never really known him, and now her mother was dead she was alone.