Honor is asleep when the call comes from Nevis. At first she doesn’t realise what has woken her and thinks it must have been Zoe, who is sitting at the bottom of her bed, doing what she has always done since she died, staring into the middle distance. Is it morning or is Zoe playing one of her tricks? Perched on her elbows now, Honor scouts the darkened room. The slice of window left visible after she shrank the curtain in the wash is still night-black. She listens out for birds but hears only the usual distant hiss of London traffic making its way along the A12 at Bow and the murmur of the boat on the water. Her brain, which feels as thick as toothpaste, is demanding more sleep. It’s tempting to ignore Zoe. Over the nearly two decades since Zoe’s death it has become Honor’s principal survival technique to pretend there’s no trouble in life so pressing you can’t turn your back on it and hope it will go away. Then again, Honor also knows that Zoe will not go away until she’s said what she’s come to say, which is tricky, given that she never speaks.

‘What’s up?’

No reply.

Her phone buzzes and throws out its tinny blue light. So this is why she woke after all. There are only two people who ever text after work hours: her daughter Nevis and her neighbour Bill and it’s too late to be Bill.

Honor reaches over to the bedside table where the phone is sitting on its charger and reads Need speak now. The breath catches in her throat. Her pulse thrums. Nevis was always scrappy about keeping in touch. She’s never been one for the long, intimate conversations that Honor knows other mothers have with their daughters. In the last few months they’ve barely communicated at all. Something Honor did or said. Nevis won’t say what. It’s gone midnight. There’s a hammering at the front of her brain. Her chest pops and splutters. All the old, long-buried anxiety comes rushing back as though the dam that had kept it back all these years has just burst its banks. She can feel it rising in her legs. She presses callback, the pad of her finger sliding on the screen, leaving a tiny slick of sweat. Holds her breath while the call connects and when Nevis doesn’t pick up, feels a terrible sinking. She cuts the line and bashes out a text.

I’m here. Call me.