The mouse continued to look up at her in fear, before it too scarpered. ‘Oh God,’ she moaned. ‘Where the hell have you gone?’ She followed it into the hallway, the cat brushing past her legs in haste, only the mouse was nowhere in sight. ‘Damn it,’ she muttered, crouching down to search under the side table.

She would have to leave it, hope that somehow it would either escape or the cat would have got rid of it by the time she returned. Eventually Janie grabbed the keys, ignoring the phone as she headed for the front door. She checked her watch. She was already running late for coffee with her school-mum friends, and if she didn’t get there on time they’d start without her and then she would have to ask them to repeat it all, because she wanted to know what Lucy had said to the head teacher.

And if their coffee meeting ran over, she’d be late for golf, and as much as she thought the instructor was particularly easy on the eye, he had an ugly temper, and she didn’t care to be on the receiving end of it.

Janie beeped the car alarm and climbed in. The entire morning had been a game of catch-up. Ever since Harry had snoozed his alarm and woken in a panic. She’d consequently not got into the shower until quarter past, and even an extra five minutes getting out of the house meant the traffic on the school run built up and getting a parking space was nigh on impossible. It meant having to pull up on double-yellows, ignoring Frosty Fiona, who was ready to slap an A4 sheet of paper on the windscreen full of horrifying statistics that she’d googled about road accidents.

If only Lucy didn’t have a doctor’s appointment straight after drop-off, the four of them could have met right afterwards, but Janie had to concur that the mole had got bigger. And that meant Janie had too much time to kill and had gone home first, which in hindsight was a mistake.

She switched on the engine and Radio 1 blasted out from the car stereo. Janie didn’t know why she still listened to the station; at forty-five, she was well past the outer limits of its target audience, yet for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to change. She supposed it was because it would be another part of her youth left behind and, more than anything, Janie couldn’t bear the thought of that. There were enough things time had stolen from her, and if she had to listen to a DJ who was young enough to be her son, speaking words she only pretended to understand, then that was what she’d continue to do.