Del smiled with his crowned teeth and flicked unpleasantly at his crotch with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Charity, Lester. It’s amazing how warm folks get in the aid of charity.’

‘Sam?’

It was the second call, and there was still no reply. Katie dropped her car keys on the kitchen table and put Jess’s writhing rigid body into her high chair. She noted with pain that Billy was already cowering, as if his father’s absence was a trick, and she slipped an arm round his shoulder, pressing his nose with a finger as though it were a button on a machine.

‘Want to get Bart organized?’

Billy’s face lit up. He nodded his head, this stranger, this boy who was scared of things he used to love. She wanted to cry again but she checked the emotion, driving a spike of adult responsibility into her shifting sands of self-pity. Billy shrugged her off and ran to the big cupboard where Bart’s disgusting dog food lived. Billy would be busy for an age now, as he tended his furry love. Katie hoped the vet was wrong. If Bart did anything to Billy …

She cancelled the thought. It wasn’t going to happen. In the meantime, where was Sam? She turned on the portable TV in the kitchen for Jess, who spluttered appreciatively as it blinked into life beside the coffee machine, although the silent coffee machine, its glass jug stained with a brown tide-mark, had more to offer in the way of entertainment. A woman with a dark top lip was sitting in a chair on a talk show with a caption beneath her that read Beth. Proud of her facial hair.

Katie opened a packet of rusks, handed one to Jess and without taking her coat off went to see if there were any messages or notes from Sam.

The house was silent, some lights left on in places that suggested they’d been that way since she left this morning. She climbed the stairs quietly, aware suddenly that she was holding her breath. From the kitchen a shout from the TV as a man yelled, ‘Lady! You look like a man!’ followed by a roar of indignation from the audience. Jess joined in with a shriek of glee, and Katie let her breath go and almost smiled as she reached the landing. The bedroom door was open but the light wasn’t on, and she walked up to it and stood in the doorway. The curtains were still closed and Katie clicked on the light.

There was a mussed-up bed, her side no longer neat where she’d smoothed the covers before leaving her husband with a stony frown this morning. Sam’s side was thrashed and crumpled, like he’d been jumping around in there. But no Sam.