Returning to his office in the Deanery, Cullen finishes up some administrative work, emails Nevis Smith to request a meeting, then makes his way down to the car park. It has started raining now. Bristolian rain, which he thinks of as West Country Wet, not really rain at all, more like mist. He pops the lock on his blue Volvo, gets in, turns on Classic FM followed by the windscreen wipers. Putting the car into reverse he cranes round to reverse out of the space and, when he turns back, he sees in the periphery of his vision the right-hand wiper brushing something small and drenched off the windscreen and onto the tarmac.

A leaf, he thinks, then realises it’s an insect drowned in the tiny tsunami created by the wiper. Alive one moment, dead the next.

Chapter 11

Honor

From a café near the museum on Harbourside Honor calls Bill, her neighbour on the water in Hackney, explains the situation and asks him to look after Caterine the Great until she gets back. Right now, she doesn’t know when that will be. It depends on how the Satnam situation plays out; not that there’s much she can do, but her gut tells her that this isn’t the time to leave. The past is stirring, like a great bear waking from hibernation.

Nevis has no idea how vulnerable she is.

They say a baby can tell if she isn’t wanted, even in the womb. Honor has read that somewhere. And in spite of everything Nevis was wanted. So much. If Nevis knew how hard Zoe had to fight to bring her into the world. Zoe’s parents begged her to book a termination. When that didn’t work, they threatened to cut off contact if she went ahead with the pregnancy. They said the baby would be tainted and that, however hard Zoe tried to protect the child from discovering her origins, she would inevitably find out one day and, when she did, the knowledge would destroy her. Better that she never be born. Kinder. At first Zoe argued with her parents then she closed her mind to them. She never stopped wanting Nevis, even when Dan and Judy made good on their threat to walk away. Then, after Zoe died, they tried to get custody. Didn’t succeed, thank goodness. Zoe was quite specific in her will. Dan and Judy didn’t deserve Nevis. Sometimes, in her darkest moments, Honor wonders whether she deserves her either.

As the waitress approaches to take her cup she remembers one more thing Bill can do. ‘I’m going to need to find a place to stay in Bristol. I don’t suppose you have any bargee friends down here who need their boat de-wintering or a bit of maintenance in exchange for a bed?’

‘I might actually. Leave it with me.’