When the floor of the back room at the Oxfam shop was clean and clear, and she had put everything in its proper place, it was closing time. She felt embarrassed to be thanked so effusively, when it had saved her sanity to do it. She said goodbye to Veena, then caught the bus, and then a train. She could have got the Tube, but she didn’t want to get out so close to her parents’ house. It felt like a sin, to ease without discomfort into so much plenty. She wanted to delay the night. It was after six when she came out of Hampstead Heath station. It had been warm but there was a cool edge to the day’s end. She walked onto the Heath, looking out from the heights over the far view of the city. The sun was a dark gold circle in the polluted haze. Dog walkers and commuters strode over the rough grass, the conceit of its scruffiness, as if every blade of grass didn’t reek of privilege. She stopped, and watched the view; the sunlight on the distant buildings, and, then she went back to Holford Road. Unable to face entering the house by its front door, she went in by the basement. Coming home to Dan and their flat, she never felt guilty, only lucky. It was just home. She wondered what precise financial distance between richest and poorest made the contrast wicked. She supposed it was a different scale for everybody. And for people like her father, limitless. The lights flicked on as she stepped underground. She could smell chlorine from the pool, and the petrol-and-oil smell from the cars. The huge red Porsche was in there, on the turntable, gleaming in the standby light, and her mother’s white Mercedes, and her father’s bigger one. She put the combination into the keypad for the inner gate. 010482. Alex’s birthday. It hadn’t changed. It wouldn’t. As she went up, the smell changed from basement to ground floor; room fragrance and glass cleaner. Her feet sank into the rugs laid over the tiles.

Dan was at the island unit. She could tell he had been waiting for her. Something was on his mind. He wasn’t waiting with love, he was waiting anxiously, defended. He looked like a person about to try and sell her something. He got down from the stool.

‘So, listen,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

But her father’s voice broke the quiet, carrying from the floor above. ‘BEA! Are you home?’

They heard his footsteps, quick and urgent, coming down the stairs.

‘Bea, I need to talk to you. Can you come to my study? Do you mind?’

‘No, sure,’ she said, and saw fear in Dan’s eyes.

‘Alone,’ said Griff, stopping Dan in his tracks. ‘When you’re ready.’

‘I’m ready now,’ said Bea, making it true.

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