Morag dabs a cloth in a frenzy at the dark stain on the carpet before the wheelchair. She looks up briefly and eyes Jess with pity and disdain, her confidence in the new girl shot. ‘Everything you need’s in the diary.’ Morag struggles to her feet, then bustles from the room without another word.

Still stunned, Jess drifts after her on unsteady legs.

Morag snatches up her bag from a kitchen counter, thuds into the hall, swings wide the front door and steps out.

Dabbing her eyes and still attempting to neaten her hair and reclaim some dignity, Jess shuffles after her new colleague, up to the threshold. But pauses when the flood of morning light pours through the front door and blinds her. ‘Hang on. Sheila tell you I need to go at two, Thursday?’

‘Yeah. Skiving already. She told you, you’s on nights next two shifts?’

‘No chance. Picking me daughter up.’

‘I’m not here. You’ll have to rearrange it.’

‘Can’t – not childcare at short notice.’

‘You’ll have to bring it up with Sheila. And don’t touch the chicken in the fridge. That’s my tea.’

‘Hang on!’

‘You already showed up late! I ain’t got time to argue on the doorstep.’ Morag pulls the door closed and returns Jess to the gloom. Dusty light struggles through the stained glass above the door: a spoked wheel of gold, or depiction of the sun. Weak threads of red and green extend into the cluttered throat of the vicarage. Jess turns and stares into the dark.

9

In the playground, a barrage of sound assails Izzy. She stands alone, and from near and far the howls and chitters and shrieks, which could have been issued by confined apes and birds, deflect from the cement and glass of the school buildings.

She is mute, uncomfortable and unsmiling, but her eyes are alight with fascination. Standing at the edge of a wide tarmac play area, the gritty surface scored by faint lines once a vivid white, pink, red and green, she tries to interpret the exciting maelstrom she’s excluded from.

So engrossed is she by the congress of the morning break, she’s unaware of what is transpiring behind her back as three grinning girls creep close and assemble in a line, taking care to stay outside of their prey’s peripheral vision.

A child’s arm, clad in a blue cardigan sleeve, dips inside the aperture where the zipper parts at the top of Izzy’s rucksack. The arm returns to the air, the small hand grasping the bag of jelly sweets that Tony gave her that morning.

Another small hand, the fingers stained by felt-tip pens, takes a turn and stealthily prods inside the dark hollow of Izzy’s unzipped bag, returning with the chocolate bar.