‘Mary? Mary,’ Shirley said. ‘Are you okay?’

The table had morphed into the one at Lowfield, and Jack was surrounded by officers and social workers:

You will not. You may not. You must not. Without the prior permission of your supervising officer.

‘Mary!’ Shirley was starting to sound mean. This often happened with Shirley.

Was that the red mist rising? It felt red. But it felt more ominous than mist.

‘I understand you’ve been going through, well, a lot, but this is a very serious situation, Mary, and we felt we really shouldn’t postpone.’

Shirley kept talking, but Mary couldn’t hear for the terrible snippets invading, making her dizzy again:

I made an excellent decision today. I beat up a paedophile.

She imagined Derek McLaverty kicking Jack in his cell, smashing her bleeding boy’s skull.

You’re the blast and I’m just another of your fucking ripples!

She imagined Jack having dinner in D hall, chatting away with Jimmy McKinley and Robert the Rapist.

‘I must not think about that,’ Mary said, which made Shirley stop talking and Catherine look up.

Her calves were itchy and she had to scratch.

‘As I was saying…’ Shirley swept a piece of paper across the table for Mary to peruse. It was filled with numbers, which began to blur, swirl and redden. ‘The dates we’ve highlighted,’ Shirley said, ‘are the days you arrived outwith core hours or left within core hours. Thirty-three times since Christmas, Mary.’

She finally managed to lift her whirling, leaden head. She looked at the spreadsheet, then at her boss, then at her boss’s boss, then at her boss again, and said: ‘This meeting is about flexitime?’

Acknowledgements

Thanks to:

Karen Sullivan, my bold and inspiring editor.

My agent, Phil Patterson, for his faith, loveliness and hard work.

Gill and Michelle, for their friendship and feedback.

The brilliant Luke Speed at Curtis Brown.

Lisa O’Donnell and Robyn Wilson for reading early drafts and giving incredible notes.

And to HRT, which got me out of bed to write this book. If Mary had slapped on a patch, none of this would ever have happened.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Helen FitzGerald is the bestselling author of ten adult and young-adult thrillers, including The Donor (2011) and The Cry (2013), which was longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and is now a major drama for BBC One. Helen worked as a criminal-justice social worker for more than fifteen years. She grew up in Victoria, Australia. She now lives in Glasgow with her husband.

Follow Helen on Twitter @FitzHelen