It was a long, sweaty train journey. I’d been lucky to get a seat, but the aisle was so crammed, people sitting on the floor, that there was zero chance of making it to the loo or buffet car. Instead I sat and brooded, unable to focus on the magazine I’d bought. All those things I used to care about, like matching tableware and new face creams. I felt torn in all directions. Cassie, weeping. Mike in hospital. That jumper in Benji’s room. Someone had hidden that in the garden waste heap, likely hoping it would get destroyed. Did that mean it was someone who knew about Andrej and his bonfires? I sat and thought about it all. About Bill, the look on his face as he left. Karen. Her white face, her shaking hands. And long ago, Martha, dead in her silk dress under a moon as pale as bone.

I almost turned and ran at the base of the street. I could only imagine DC Devine’s face if he knew I was here. It might even be a crime of some kind. I didn’t know. I’d come anyway – I had no choice.

I’d got it out of a reluctant Jodi that Karen had gone home to Birmingham. Probably, the police housing budget had run out, so they’d sent her back to her old life. It was a long time since I’d visited Karen here – had it always been this shabby? The kind of road that made me pull my handbag closer to myself, walk stiff and fast. Bins in what had been front gardens, litter in the gutters, a house boarded up and graffitied. The last time we’d come, I remembered, we’d swooped Karen and Jake off to stay in a cottage in the Cotswolds with us. Thinking we were being kind, giving Jake a glimpse of fun and wealth. Not realising that maybe we were being cruel. I put my hand on the gate then pulled it back as if it was hot. The paint was rough and peeling, and someone’s takeaway sprawled across the pavement like a crime scene, chilli sauce ebbing against my loafers. I tutted, wiping it off as best I could, and rang the number for Karen’s flat. It was a lifetime since I’d lived somewhere like this – right after uni I’d floated along with Mike to a Clapham houseshare with Callum. Even that had been nice, the boys’ salaries propelling us right through the scuzzy broke stages of life, scraping together coins for a gas meter, living off brown rice till payday. For the first time, I registered that maybe this wasn’t right. At least it told me one thing – if Karen and Jake lived like this, they were unlikely to be getting money from Mike every month.