I tried the car door. Still shut.

I reached for the central locking button but Stoner seized my wrists.

‘My son,’ I said. ‘I need to pick up my boy, he will be waiting for me, he will be scared.’

‘Until that poor bastard of a soldier showed up,’ DCI Stoner said, ‘it was all on you.’

We were being watched by the family in the playground now. DCI Stoner’s ex-wife was staring at him, a look of pure terror on her face. Her phone was in her hand as her husband herded their two small daughters away from the roundabout.

‘I have to pick up my son,’ I said, shoving my fists against his chest, banging them against him until he released his grip. ‘I mean it. Let me out of this car or …’

‘Or what, little man? What are you going to do to me?’

‘If my son is upset because I’m not there, then I swear to God …’

‘Go on, go on, you can do it!’

‘You’re a dead man!’

‘That’s my boy,’ Stoner chuckled. ‘That’s all I wanted to hear. That’s all I needed to know. Good for you, little man. We’re done now.’

His phone was on the dashboard.

He picked it up, stared at Voice Memos for a moment and then pressed the red button to turn off the recording.

We both looked up at the sound of the sirens.

And then the police were there.

But this time they had not come for me.

The family watched from the playground as Stoner was taken away. I felt like I should apologise to them but there was no time. I ran all the way to the school. In the end, it was not too bad. I was not late. The going-home bell had just stopped ringing.

And as I walked home holding hands with Marlon, my boy chatting about the story I would read him at bedtime, I dropped DCI Stoner’s phone down a drain.

39

Tara

‘I’ve got you,’ Uncle Jack said, hoisting Marlon onto Maple’s back.

Everything was too big. The horse, the saddle, the long drop to the dirt of the round riding pen, and Maple’s mouth, that great gaping endlessly moving hole with teeth the size of Stonehenge.

Marlon looked petrified. But one of Uncle Jack’s hands hovered behind Marlon’s back and the other soothed Maple’s muzzle.

‘I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,’ Jack chanted, and Maple stared thoughtfully at me – Wasn’t that you on my back once upon a time? – as the look of frozen terror on Marlon’s face dissolved into an expression of disbelief and finally settled into something akin to wonder.

Uncle Jack glanced over to where my mother and I were leaning against the wooden railings of the riding pen.

‘Boy’s got a good seat,’ Uncle Jack said, and my mother and I quietly applauded. Maple slightly lifted her head and Marlon beamed, his face ecstatic under my old pink riding helmet.