‘Oh, my love. My sweet love.’ Jess is stricken enough by her daughter’s confession to cry herself. She tries to draw Izzy into an embrace.

Izzy twists free of her hands. ‘I want Daddy! I want my daddy. He’ll shout at them!’

‘Izz. We been through it. My love—’

‘They keep hurtin’ me! Every day! An’ Flo helped me.’

For a moment Jess doesn’t speak, is rendered speechless. When she manages to form a sentence, her voice is breathless. ‘Izz? What you mean, Flo helped you? Izz? Tell me.’

‘Told me to say things. To make it stop.’

‘What things?’

‘Words.’

Jess stands up, her face now so drawn with sleep deprivation and stress she can only gaze at Izzy as if her daughter is another mother’s child.

21

With the hand that is not incessantly pulling at a strand of her fringe, Jess holds her phone. She bites her bottom lip as she waits for a call to be answered. When it is, her shoulders sag with relief. ‘Oh, Pen. Love. Hiya. I’m after a big favour. Really sorry. Got problems up Izzy’s school.’

‘Not them bloody girls again.’

‘Yeah. That’s about the size of it. And I gotta work tonight again. Sheila won’t bloody listen. Anyways, can you take Izz? Just for tonight and drop her up—’

‘You know I would, any time. But we’re out tonight. Anniversary. We ain’t had a night together in ages.’

‘Oh, shit. Sorry. I totally forgot.’

‘It don’t matter, Jess.’

‘You know anyone else who can take her tonight? Just tonight?’

‘I don’t. Sarah would have done but she’s got mine.’

Jess looks at the ceiling in exasperation, or despair, and closes her eyes as if the thump of drums against the ceiling risks damage to her sight as well as hearing.

Izzy’s voice startles her back into the room. ‘I want to go to Flo’s.’

Jess turns and meets her daughter’s eyes that are still red from crying.

‘I don’t want to go to Penny’s!’

* * *

As the front door of Nerthus House closes behind Morag on her way out, waning sunlight pierces the stained glass of the spoked wheel fanlight.

Weary Jess plods the hallway. Still sullen from the spat that began in the flat and continued to spark on the bus journey here, Izzy drifts behind her mother. By the time they’ve shuffled into the living room, Jess’s expression stiffens. There is evidence of the stern resolve that she will adopt in her care of Florence Gardner and her landfill of a home, in the form of the supermarket bags that bulge beneath her hands. One is filled with light bulb boxes, the other cleaning equipment.