‘I did, yeah, and I passed it on,’ the woman said. ‘This is the second call in an hour about Zach March, in fact. I hear he took a nasty beating at school.’

‘Yes, unfortunately. Can I ask who the other call was from?’

‘You need to talk to the Youth Team Officer about Cecilia.’ The PC gave me another number to ring. She wasn’t going to tell me anymore, I guessed, but I pushed it.

‘Who was the other call from?’

There was a pause, a shuffling of papers. Just when I was going to hang up, she said, very quietly, ‘I believe it was from Willow Jackson.’

‘Oh!’ I processed this. ‘You mean, from her mum, Nella?’

‘Not as far as I understand.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Did she call to repent then? Willow?’

‘I’m not sure repent’s the word I’d use.’ The policewoman’s voice was level. ‘But by all accounts, she has changed her mind too, about the events that night. Was mistaken about what she saw.’

Thank God.

‘Too much champagne apparently.’ There was a definite emphasis on champagne. ‘Big waste of time, it seems.’

‘Aha.’ I sat in my cloud of disgusting vape smoke. ‘I see.’

‘Do you?’ The officer sighed. ‘Because I’m not quite sure I do.’

‘So it’s case closed?’

‘It’s no longer my jurisdiction, Mrs Whitaker. The Youth Offending Team are dealing with it,’ she said. ‘All the Ts will need to be crossed; someone will have to talk to Cecilia.’ A pause. ‘Let’s just hope the March boy is all right.’

‘Yes, let’s hope.’

I hung up, imagining Ruby’s relief at the news.

Then I attached the link I’d been sent earlier into a new email and pressed send.

Nella

I’d made my bed, my mother would say. She’d be no help whatsoever if I went crying to her.

She never had been really: she was my father’s wife. The Colonel’s Wife, head of the Women’s Institute; chief flower arranger for their church. Everything was about appearance and toeing lines, about being fragrant and conciliatory to men.

That’s what she taught me – that, and the fact my father was far more important to her than any of us, her children.

And I’d had an inkling what was going on with Marcus for years. Since Beau’s difficult birth, since the screaming tantrums at the extortionate nursery demonstrated something was clearly wrong.

My beloved husband couldn’t help himself, it seemed. Women liked him, and he liked them back. Even that marriage therapist: was that her scent on his shirt the other morning?

The trouble was I liked him too; far more than liked. And worse, I liked our life. It was really comfortable, and now, he was on the up.

I didn’t want to have to start again. To split the money: to turn up to events, to parents’ evenings and functions, alone. I didn’t want the pity of either strangers or friends. I didn’t enjoy their jealousy either: the assumptions they made. But I did like the privilege of being married to a wealthy man, self-made (largely), driven, with ambitions to make it to Parliament. Further, even.