Still raining, few people were about and the emptiness made Sarah feel conspicuous. Wetness had seeped into the soles of her feet, making them slippery inside her heels, and she leaned gently against a railing. Only one other figure was visible. A little way down the road, huddled similarly beneath brolly, stood a large, black woman, vibrant against cloud. Her skirt was bright orange, tipped at the hem by muddied water, her coat a deep red. Sarah would have noticed this woman even amidst a tightly packed crowd. But after first inspection, it was not the brightness of the clothes that kept Sarah’s attention, it was the gaze of the woman’s eyes. They were focussed in exactly the same direction as Sarah’s had been a moment earlier, staring straight at the house across the street.

Immediately, Sarah wondered who this woman was, standing there, watching.

As Sarah stood, watching.

Watching some more.

When suddenly, out of the house next door to Veronica’s, stepped a young man. Hooded, he was without an umbrella, but walked with defiance as though he didn’t need one, as though the weather didn’t apply to him. And all of a sudden, the rain began to slow, as if in compliance, and in the distance now the young man seemed to nod, as though satisfied by this thing he had already known. It may be England, but it was summer after all. Damp. Not the time to fantasise about fiery tempests. Rather to calm down. To do the right, measured, expected thing.

Simone

There is no time.

After the social worker left, Simone had done all she could to hide her nerves, to look casual, but she passed by the front window on at least eight occasions, looking for Dominic. He finally materialised just before dinner, but even before they sat down, conversation was commandeered by Terry’s recounting of how Simone had given the social worker what for. He’d loved that. He spoke with his hand on her knee, the warmth of it seeping into her skin and sickening her, but she nodded, and smiled, and laughed in all the right places, noticing with a detached interest how in previous days she would have been fooled by these gestures of his, bolstered high enough for him to later knock down. When finally, Terry released first her leg and then Dominic from the table (Jasmine deliberately fed early and deposited in bed), Simone tried to grab a few minutes alone with her son. She needed to explain the happenings of the last week, she needed to explain her plan. But Dominic decisively closed the door to his room, and by the time she managed to casually walk across the living room and reach for the handle, Terry was requesting her presence on the sofa, insisting on a shared spliff to cap off the day.

In the middle of the night, she tried again, attempting to creep from their bed into Dominic’s room, but Terry stirred, wrapping himself around her, and the risk was too great. She would get up early, she told herself, catch Dominic before school. She didn’t, however, account for the blurring effect of the spliff, and by the time she managed to pull herself from bed the following day, Dominic was gone.