Emma couldn’t repeat it. She shouldn’t have said that. She didn’t even know what she meant. She had to do something decisive rather than continue in this vein so she went over to get some toilet paper, snatched it off and blew her nose.

‘You should be careful what you say,’ he said.

‘I’m always careful what I say! That’s my fucking job!’ she shout-whispered; even in this state she still worried about being overheard. ‘I want some of that cocaine downstairs.’

‘What? No you don’t.’

Si sat down on the edge of the bath and stared at her.

She too sat down on the edge of the bath, knocking over a row of Hattie’s expensive products as she did so.

‘You’ve drunk too much,’ he said.

‘No, I haven’t.’ Obviously, she had.

‘You’ve got work tomorrow.’

‘No, I haven’t. Not till Friday.’

They sat there for about a minute, side by side, both staring at the floor tiles. Her hair had slipped forward and he couldn’t see her face, but she sniffed loudly.

‘It’s awful,’ she said, her voice deep and angry. ‘It’s just awful.’

‘What’s awful, love?’

‘Those little girls . . .’

Slowly, he stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. ‘You know you don’t have to do this case? You could have it reassigned.’

Emma ignored him and stood up swiftly. She went to the little window above the toilet and opened it. She got out her cigarettes and lit up. She stood there, her back to him, and took a long soothing drag as she pulled herself together. ‘I saw the forensic photographs today,’ she said, turning around, glancing at him. ‘We showed them to her. You know what she did when she saw the photograph of her daughter lying there in a coma?’

They held each other’s gaze for a moment. ‘She laughed, Simon.’

Emma looked back out of the window where a gust of wind was hurling the rain against the neighbouring brick wall.

‘She’s not of sound mind, love,’ he said. He was ever the lawyer. Everything was so black and white for him.

‘But she seems it. She seems far sounder than any of us.’

‘Facts are facts,’ he said.

‘Those idiots downstairs,’ she said quietly, so that the idiots wouldn’t hear her. ‘Are they dead? Are they in a coma? They don’t care, do they, as long as they get some gossip out of it . . .’

Emma blew the smoke in a steady stream out into the wet night and listened to the rain without moving, her eyes looking through the brick wall into a bleak beyond.

‘No,’ she said quietly, more to herself. ‘A dead child is just a dead child.’