‘You know she’ll hang for it,’ he said. ‘They’ll catch her and they’ll string her up.’

‘If she’s a murderer, they might. But we can’t let her get away with it.’

‘You’re asking me to be a grass and I won’t do it.’ He was picturing the too-bright station with the sullen sergeant at his desk, abandoning his evening paper as they walked in, flashing them a can I help you? face, and the eternity that he would take to write down everything they told him, only to slip off into another room to speak to his superiors and then return with tougher questions, using different names to speak of her: Miss Savigear, this Joyce you’re on about, your older sister, your apprentice, this young woman you’re in charge of, your employee. The police would take the bones of Charlie’s story and discard the rest. They wouldn’t care to listen when he spoke of her kind nature, how she’d screen her eyes at the romantic parts of films to hide her crying. When they asked if they could have a photograph of her, they wouldn’t want the daft one of her riding on the back of a stuffed lion at Maidstone Zoo; they’d want the mugshot from her borstal file in Mr Mayhood’s cabinet.

‘One of us has got to do it,’ Florence said, behind him. ‘I can go alone, if you’d prefer. I’ll tell them. Here –’ She held her lantern out so he would take it. Her expression was a plea. ‘You know what’s right and wrong, Charlie, and this is wrong. You can’t have something like this weigh you down, no matter who’s responsible. And if it wasn’t Joyce, then someone did it, after all. We can’t just shut our eyes and say we didn’t notice.’ When he took the lantern from her, she reached out and squeezed his arm in solidarity. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ It seemed there was no situation dire enough to stop him yearning after her. ‘Try not to catch pneumonia out here. Arthur doesn’t know I know it, but he’s got a flask of brandy in his coat, so you can share it out between you.’ Mr Mayhood gave a hum. ‘You see? I told you. That should keep you going for a while.’ And then she was no longer there for him to put his mind to, trampling down the slope somewhere en route towards the wagon, darkening the distance.

Part Three

THE REASONS

June 1955

First, she’d paid a visit to his aunty’s place in Borough Green, where she’d assumed he was still living. It was right up on the summit of Crow Hill – one of two red-brick and shingle houses jointed at the middle by another, pebble-dashed. The close was quiet and rustic, with an island of long grass where children could’ve played had it been mown; some of the residents had parked their cars on it, so that’s where she’d left hers. But this had caused some friction with Aunt Helen, who’d spied it from her doorway and refused to let her through the gate until she’d moved it ‘off the green’. She’d followed orders and come back again. Aunt Helen had apologized in an unmeaning sort of way: ‘I’m sorry to insist on that, but I’ve been having quite a battle with the pair at number 10 about their car and I don’t want to be a hypocrite. Now tell me, Mrs Mayhood, how do you take your tea?’