With one last glance towards the neighbours’ closed window, Simone turns back towards her own. In the front room, a shadow darts, but Dominic moves before he can notice her noticing.

In the living room, there is a large clock that Simone presumes was purchased by Milly, or a tenant before her. It is not wooden, nor does it boast intricate mechanics of spinning wheels that can be viewed through glass – in other words it is not like the one that Simone used to spend time gazing at in her parents’ hallway – but it is large and loud, and the ticking of seconds is strident and unmissable. By four o’clock, Terry is still not home. At creaks, and slams, and imagined sounds, she and Dominic take turns in snatching their heads towards the door, but more minutes pass intact. Until at 4.15pm there is finally a ring on the bell. When Simone sees from the window a woman accompanied by a pair of police officers, her constricted lungs give way to the heat, and the activity, and the lingering smoke, and for a full minute she cannot breathe.

The woman turns out to be a social worker named Polly. She wears a pair of loose black trousers, a short-sleeved blue blouse, and her cropped blonde hair sticks slightly to the sweat on her brow. Her cheeks are flushed by the heat of the day, but a red lip brightens the effect so that the colourfulness looks almost intentional. When Simone creeps tentatively down the stairs and cracks the front door, Polly smiles broadly, introducing first herself and then the officers, allowing Simone one last pretence of choice in asking politely if they may come inside. Simone doesn’t have to let a social worker into the house, she knows this, but police is different.

Simone invites them to sit at the kitchen table. The TV is still blaring, and despite being well used to its constant presence, a remembered etiquette flits through her fingers. She feels embarrassed to leave it on in front of company, though not enough to turn it off. She is too grateful for the shield it provides, the distraction that will stop Jasmine at least from hearing whatever it is these people have come to say. It won’t work quite the same for Dominic. Dominic is listening.

What are they going to say?

Simone imagines that Terry has gone and done something stupid, that he’s hurt somebody, or done something to himself, that he’ll need an alibi again. She braces herself for this. But Polly does not want to sit at the table or whisper to Simone by the door, and begins instead by asking if she can speak to Dominic, alone, in his bedroom she suggests. A glance to the police officers confirms to Simone that this is not a request, so pasting on a forced smile she ushers Dominic over. “What’s going on?” she asks Polly as breezily as she can, putting her arm around Dominic. But beneath lowered eyes, she and her son exchange bewildered glances, and before he disappears with Polly, Dominic grasps his mother’s hand as he has not done in a very long time, and Simone squeezes his palm back. Through interlocked fingers, their panicked thoughts mingle wordlessly, tensing flesh, tormenting bitten nails, conspiring together to maintain the pretence they both know is the only way to protect each other. And then he lets go, and with Polly is gone.