Текст книги "Scarred for Life"

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

‘Any luck with that symbol?’ she asked.

Dave started typing on his keyboard and then pointed to the screen.

‘Why are you showing me rugby players’ thighs?’ Jessica asked, peering closely at the screen. ‘I’m not complaining – I just didn’t realise this was what you spent your days looking at.’

‘This is the Wales rugby team,’ Dave replied.

‘That guy looks like he sleeps in a ditch,’ Jessica said, pointing at one of the hairier players.

‘I thought you might be more interested in the badge.’

Dave zoomed in on one of the players’ jerseys until the image appeared of three feathers arching in a similar pattern to the one on the corner of Jessica’s envelope.

Jessica stared closely at the screen but shook her head. ‘That’s not it.’

‘I know. When you first showed me it, I thought it reminded me of something but I was wrong – it was only this. This is the Prince of Wales’ crest – it’s close but not the same.’

‘If the Prince of Wales is stalking me, he can sod right off.’

Before Jessica could start to list the ways the royal family annoyed her, her phone rang with an unregistered number. She quickly thanked Dave and hurried towards the corner, phone at her ear.

‘If this is double glazing, then I’m not interested.’

There was a confused male voice at the other end: ‘Huh?’

‘I said . . . forget it. Hello.’

‘Jess?’

‘Yes, who’s calling?’

‘It’s Garry. Can we meet – usual place as soon as you can?’

Jessica checked her watch: ten past eleven. Early lunch it was.

For the third day in a row, Jessica surveyed the scene of the supermarket cafe. Pensioners: yep. Single parents: yep. Bored-looking assistants: yep. Half-asleep copper and journalist who looked like he’d had a near-death experience huddled around a table looking sorry for themselves: yep.

Jessica had gone for three espressos, with a Danish and vanilla slice on the side. Added to the chocolate biscuits at three in the morning, this was a new high for sugar intake before midday. As she returned to the table, Garry groaned, closing his eyes and turning to stare out of the window.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Jessica asked.

‘I can’t even look at food this morning.’

Jessica dangled the pecan Danish in front of his face. ‘Sure you don’t want a bite?’

‘Bleugh. I knew I shouldn’t have come out this early.’

‘Did Mrs Ashford keep you up with her arthritis?’

Garry turned back to Jessica, almost focusing on her but not quite. ‘One day, you’re going to meet her and then you’re going to have to take all this back.’

Jessica downed the first espresso and took a bite of the cake. ‘Whatever – why are we here for a third day running? The staff are going to think we’re having an affair. That might be something that raises you in their eyes but what about my reputation? They’re going to think I’m having a breakdown.’

‘I was on the lash last night.’

‘You called me here to tell me that?’

Garry shook his head but his bottom lip was hanging limply and his eyes were slits. ‘I’m too old for this. I remember being at uni and we’d go out through the night, sleep for two hours and then roll up to lectures as if nothing was wrong. Now I can barely get through the afternoon without needing a kip.’

‘You’re younger than me!’

‘Ugh. Anyway, I went out with the editor last night. Like I said, he’s been brought in from down south and doesn’t really know anyone. Everyone’s been saying for months that someone should make friends with him – actually go out with him, find out what he’s all about – that kind of thing.’

‘So the pair of you were out and about in town, being turned down by numerous women – then what happened?’

Garry didn’t even have the good grace to smile. ‘It wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to risk being out with the boss, so we went to this dive out Eccles way.’

‘Bloody hell, what were you thinking?’

‘Evidently I wasn’t thinking. I’ve been in some rough places when I was a student in Liverpool but they were nothing. The barmaid had a baby in one arm and was pulling pints with the other, there was a fight on the other side of the bar, and I’m pretty sure the stain on the carpet by my feet was blood, not red wine.’

Jessica nodded in agreement. ‘It’s not really a red wine kind of area. Why did you go there?’

‘For you! You had me thinking there was something going on and I knew the only way I’d be able to get the editor talking was if I got him laryxed. I didn’t want to be seen dead with him in the city centre and if I was going to be buying drinks all night, then it had to be somewhere cheap – so we had a quick half down this side street off Deansgate, where I didn’t think anyone would notice, then we got a bus.’

‘Aww, and you got hammered just for me? You’re so sweet.’

‘Anyway, for every pint of cheap lager I had, I was ordering him a pint of this local ale that’s about eight per cent. After three drinks, he could barely say his own name. Mind you, I wasn’t much better – I can’t remember the last time I was on the beer.’

‘Were you at least sober enough to ask him who phoned and asked him to change the front page?’

‘I’m getting to that.’

Garry paused to wipe strands of sweat-drenched hair away from his forehead.

Jessica downed her second espresso. ‘You really don’t look well.’

‘Moonlighting as a doctor, are we?’

‘I’ve had the odd alcoholic beverage in my time.’

Garry downed the rest of a glass of water – the only thing he’d attempted to eat or drink – and then rubbed his eyes. When he spoke again, his tone was lower, more serious. ‘This is a big thing for me.’

‘What is?’

‘I’ve never broken a source. It’s one of the biggest things in this job, like a doctor or a lawyer with their confidentiality – you have to keep your sources.’

‘Anything you tell me will stay between us.’

‘Promise?’

‘Of course.’

‘The person who called to talk about our front page is the same person who leaked the initial story about Holden Wyatt to our reporter. I asked what was talked about but the editor said there were no threats, just that he was told we’d get a lot more cooperation on all sorts of fronts if we could do a favour.’

‘Do you do many favours?’

Garry shrugged. ‘More than you might think – usually it involves PR companies who ask if we can be nice about something in return for access to a celebrity or two. Sometimes the council tries to get a bit smart. It shouldn’t really happen but it’s hard to stop. You and me have had agreements in the past, haven’t we?’

That was one way to put it.

‘Who made the call?’

Garry reached across and touched Jessica’s third and final espresso. ‘Can I have this?’

‘Go for it.’

Garry drank the coffee in one go and breathed out deeply. ‘I need to know you’re going to look after me if it comes down to it – I’m getting married; I’ve got a life.’

‘You can trust me.’

Garry gulped and then finally said the name. ‘It was Graham Pomeroy.’

Jessica paused, breathing through her nose, repeating the name in her mind. ‘. . . As in Assistant Chief Constable Graham Pomeroy?’

‘Yes.’

‘As in Porky Pomeroy – one of my bosses?’

Garry plonked the cup back down on the table and nodded. ‘Yep.’

27

To say the structure of Greater Manchester Police was complicated would be underestimating quite how convoluted the whole thing was. As well as being split into CID and uniform divisions, everything was then carved up into regions – North, South, East, West and Metropolitan. Individual stations then housed officers based loosely upon geography, so Jessica worked for Manchester Metropolitan CID, based at Longsight, with DCI Jack Cole as the highest-ranking officer permanently on site, and Detective Superintendent William Aylesbury overseeing half-a-dozen stations.

So far, so simple – sort of.

Above that were two chief superintendents, five assistant chief constables, a deputy chief constable and the overall chief constable.

No one Jessica spoke to ever seemed to know quite what the chief constables actually did. Clearly it involved rolling up at civic functions in a suit, quaffing champagne, and guffawing every time the council leader told a rubbish joke. There was definitely an element of turning up if anyone important was in town, or flouncing off to London for a glass of rosé with other chief constables a few times a year. If you were really lucky, you might even get a knighthood if you brown-nosed the right person. What you definitely did not do was head into the city centre on a Friday night to help pack drunken revellers into the back of a riot van while simultaneously trying not to get puked on. Not that Jessica did that either, but that wasn’t the point.

Admittedly, she rarely spoke to anyone who wasn’t Izzy, Dave, Archie or, in the old days, DCI Cole, but that wasn’t the point either.

All that could be put to one side, however, because the fact was that Graham Pomeroy was a significant name in the Greater Manchester Police force.

Jessica wasn’t sure what to say and couldn’t get past her first question: ‘Why would he be getting involved in day-to-day police work?’

Garry was looking slightly perkier after the coffee. ‘I thought you might know.’

‘Usually you can’t get that lot off the golf course unless there’s the chance to go on TV.’

‘Have you ever met him?’

‘A few times. Once or twice a year, they’ll host these engagement things to make it look like we’re a part of the community and so on. The thought’s in the right place but no one seems to realise that the only people who come out and get involved are the ones who don’t mind us anyway. We should concentrate on the teenagers and the kids – they’re the ones who are going to grow into adults who can’t stand us. We end up holding these dreadful events no one wants to go to, but if we did something like a football day, or if we hosted a BMX event, that kind of thing, we’d actually get a few of the lads down.’ Jessica sighed – this was an argument she’d made before. ‘Anyway, whenever we have one of these god-awful things, either the chief constable, his deputy, or one of the assistants turns up. They’ll smile, wave, have their photo taken, and then sod back off to the house in the country. Pomeroy usually shows up if there’s a free meal on the go.’

‘He’s distinctive then?’

‘If by “distinctive”, you mean “morbidly obese”, then yes, he is.’

‘Do you think whatever’s going on around your station is down to him?’

DCI Cole had said it himself: ‘Word has come down from above to get the Potter case sorted . . .’ Had Pomeroy given the call?

Before Jessica could reply, her phone began to ring. She apologised and took the call, then said sorry again after hanging up. ‘I’ve got to go – another woman’s gone missing.’

Everyone knew the drill with missing persons – make sure twenty-four hours had passed, ask if they’d checked the shed in case the person was hiding there. Was there any chance the absentee had simply had a night on the lash and fallen asleep on the bus home?

The reason Jessica drove across the city to the home of Joe Peters was that he lived with his girlfriend Leanne two streets away from the spot where it seemed likely Cassie and Grace had disappeared – and she hadn’t been seen in almost sixteen hours. Joe had read about the other missing girls and persuaded the 999 operator to put him through to someone who would listen.

Joe’s story was depressingly familiar and almost horrifyingly mundane. He and Leanne had argued over what to watch on television the previous night but, instead of compromising or turning the set off entirely, things had escalated into a full-blown barney and she’d stormed out of the house calling him every name under the sun. An hour later and Joe was regretting calling her a ‘fat fucking bitch’, which he insisted was in response to her branding him ‘a small-cocked, weasel-faced wanker’. Joe insisted to Jessica that he wasn’t ‘small-cocked’ but didn’t seem to argue about being ‘weasel-faced’. Either way, Leanne’s mobile phone seemed to be switched off and she wasn’t at any of her friends’ houses, or her mother’s, which meant that Joe had gone into a panic over the fate of the girl whose weight he had lovingly questioned less than a day ago.

It was precisely this kind of pettiness that was the reason why they didn’t usually start to investigate missing people until an entire day had passed – often longer.

Joe sat in an armchair trying to rock their baby to sleep, cooing in the child’s ear that ‘Mummy will be home soon’, while reeling off the list of insults he and Leanne had thrown at each other the previous night.

He placed the child on his lap and began massaging his shoulder with a pained groan, before adding: ‘We’ve kicked off in the past but she always comes back.’

They took a photograph of the missing woman in case they needed to run an appeal – or if a body turned up.

As she left the house with Archie close behind, Jessica noticed a black woman leaning against the front door of the adjacent house, smoking a cigarette. With a side-flick of her head, she beckoned Jessica over. When Jessica and Archie were close enough, she broke into a knowing smile, showing an impressive array of bright white teeth. ‘What is it this time?’

‘Sorry?’ Jessica replied.

‘It’s always something with those two – shouting at each other, swearing at the top of their voices, throwing things. Poor little baby has to sit through it all.’

‘How long have they lived here?’

‘Just over a year. I reckon your lot have been out half-a-dozen times since then.’

That was something someone probably should have checked before they’d decided to prioritise this as a missing persons case worthy of attention.

‘How well do you know them?’ Jessica asked.

The woman finished her cigarette and stubbed it out with her foot. ‘As well as anyone knows their neighbours nowadays. He’s Joe, she’s Leanne – neither of them seem to work, that’s about it.’

‘Have you actually seen them arguing?’

A weary nod: ‘Last summer – well, that one week in July – they were having a barbecue in the back garden. I went over for a sausage to be polite but couldn’t get away quickly enough. They’d invited a bunch of their mates over and it was already rowdy by mid-afternoon. A few more beers and everyone was shouting at everyone else. I was in our back bedroom watching as she went for him with the big tong things they were using to turn the meat over. She was whacking him on the shoulder and calling him all sorts. Then she picked up a garden gnome and hurled that at him too. I was in half a mind to give your lot a call but didn’t want the trouble in case either of them found out.’

With the alternative being that their killer had taken another woman, Jessica hoped this was another argument that had got out of hand.

Back at the station and they were making gentle inquiries into Leanne’s whereabouts without definitively classing her as missing. A small team were checking number plates that had gone into the area the previous evening, with CCTV from the shops at the bottom of the road being looked at just in case Leanne had popped in. Both Joe and Leanne had a string of low-level convictions, mainly for breaches of the peace, and someone was examining their known associates too. All in all, it was quite the farce.

Jessica knew there would be a stack of paperwork waiting for her but didn’t make it to her office before Fat Pat bellowed after her that DCI Cole wanted a word.

Despite apparently requesting her presence, he once again made her wait in the corridor, holding his hand up through the glass windows and then turning his back as he spoke on the phone. If he was deliberately trying to wind her up, then he certainly knew what he was doing. Jessica couldn’t help but wonder if the person on the phone was Pomeroy.

After a few minutes of steaming in the corridor, she finally got the wave from Cole, calling her into his office. He didn’t wait for her to sit before starting to speak: ‘That was a phone call to say that the missing woman Leanne is no longer missing. Apparently she got on a train and didn’t have the money to get back. She didn’t realise anyone was looking for her. Apologies for sending you out there – but better to be safe.’

It wasn’t a complete note of regret, nor had he used the word ‘sorry’ – but it was an apology of sorts, which was more than she’d had from him in months.

‘We can’t go chasing things up every time a couple have an argument.’

‘I know, but there’s something else . . .’ Suddenly the apology didn’t seem quite so charitable. ‘I’m sending you home – it’s late notice but there are all sorts of issues with staff and I need a senior officer to keep an eye on the area Cassie Edmonds and Grace Savage went missing from after dark.’

‘You’re putting me on nights?’

‘For Friday and Saturday. Take the rest of today off and don’t come in until late tomorrow evening. Take Sunday off too and then we’ll look again at next week. I’ve checked things over with HR and Patrick, plus there’s a bit of flexibility in the overtime budget if there’s anyone in particular you want to take out with you.’

Jessica bit on her top lip, thinking of how best to reply. There was no polite way. ‘Am I being picked on?’

Cole’s face folded into a frown but his tone didn’t soften. ‘Why would you think that?’

Jessica wanted to ask him why he’d been off with her for months, plus who was putting pressure on him and why. Instead, she gave the only answer she could: ‘No reason, Sir.’

28

Jessica sat in the small waiting area of the Indian restaurant trying to keep her temper. ‘I just don’t understand why you book a seat for half seven if you’re here at half seven and all the tables are full. Doesn’t that defeat the very purpose of making a booking?’

Adam sipped his pint of Cobra and patted her infuriatingly on the knee. ‘They’re just busy – it’s fine. We’ll get to eat.’

Jessica mumbled something about him backing her up for a change, going somewhere else, not wanting to be rushed, wondering why that waiter kept leaning against the doorframe not doing much, and then realising it was because he was trying to chat up the group of women in leather trousers.

All those things annoyed her, but none so much as the fact that she knew she was being picked on. It wasn’t the first time she’d been switched to lates at short notice and likely wouldn’t be the last – but the timing was fishy. Was it because they wanted a different officer to find something to pin on Holden Wyatt while she was off during the day, or were they trying to get her out of the way for another reason? The actual shifts wouldn’t inconvenience her that much – she rarely slept for longer than a few hours at a time and being off during the day might give her a chance to get up to no good away from prying eyes. That still didn’t stop her feeling marginalised – and even though she’d never met him properly, Graham Pomeroy’s enormous frame was surely casting a shadow over her life.

In an attempt to put it all out of her mind, Jessica had told Adam she was taking him out for tea to wherever he wanted to go; the only proviso was that it had to be exactly where she wanted and if he could pretend that it was where he wanted to go as well, then she’d be really grateful.

Luckily, Adam was a good actor and a far more patient person than she was.

Jessica peered up at the clock again – quarter to eight. They should have sat down to eat fifteen minutes ago. She nudged Adam with her knee. ‘Are you going to say something?’

‘Of course I’m not.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re in a restaurant. Do you really think the best thing to do is piss people off before they make your food?’

Fair point.

Fifteen minutes later and Jessica was working her way through a stack of poppadoms and tray of pickles as Adam leant back in his seat and watched her. ‘It’s nice to be out.’

‘It’s nice not to have to cook.’

‘Since when do you cook?’

‘I did you Pot Noodle on toast last week.’

‘Find that one in a celebrity chef book, did you?’

Jessica dug a slice of poppadom deep into the mango chutney, not daring to look up from the food because she didn’t want to catch his eye. ‘Sorry about, well, everything. Being late, sleeping on the sofa, being on nights . . .’

Adam sounded convincing, but then he’d had a lot of practice. ‘It’s fine – I’m going to pop over to Georgia’s flat tomorrow.’

Jessica hadn’t seen Adam’s sister in months. ‘How is she?’

‘That’s what I’m going to find out.’

‘Oh, right . . .’

Adam reached forward and dipped his finger in the onion chutney. ‘We should talk about Bex.’

‘What about her?’

‘Who is she?’

‘I told you.’

‘You said she’d stolen your purse and that you weren’t sure why you invited her into our home. She’s there now – it’s fine, I trust you – but there has to be a point to all of this.’

Jessica finished off the final poppadom and drank some of her wine to give herself a few moments to think. Luckily, the waiter trotted over and began clearing the remains of the food away, giving her a few more seconds. Eventually, she gave her reply: ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘She’s seventeen, Jess.’

‘I know.’

‘Is it because of . . . ?’

Adam didn’t want to say it outright – no one except Jessica’s mother ever did – but it was clear what he meant. ‘You think I’m trying to be Bex’s mum?’

‘I didn’t say that – you’re the one who said you don’t know what you’re doing. I just want to make sure you’re not going to end up hurting yourself.’

‘Why would I do that?’

Adam started to reply but had to pause as the waiter cheerfully brought over a tray with their starters on. It was all smiles and thank yous until they were alone again, then Adam leant in and whispered: ‘You don’t know who she is, Jess. I know you want to help and it’s fine if you want her to stay at our house for a while – but you have to think about what you’re getting yourself into. Are you going to help her get a job? Go to college? Find her own place? What about clothes, food and transport?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Can you at least try to think about things?’

Jessica took another mouthful of wine, holding it in her mouth, enjoying the slightly bitter taste. ‘I have thought about them, I just don’t know the answers yet.’

Adam tilted his head, smiling slightly. ‘Okay.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I want you to be happy, Jess.’

‘What about us?’

‘I’m happy if you are.’

She finished her drink. ‘That’s not an answer – what do you want?’

It was Adam’s turn to become self-conscious, using a napkin to wipe something non-existent from his face and replying almost apologetically: ‘I’ve already got everything I want.’

Jessica immersed herself in the food so that she didn’t have to respond, then changed the subject. She hated it when he said things like that because what was she supposed to say back?

The rest of the meal was terrific, the wine was smooth, the taxi drive back to the house was uneventful and the lights were off when they arrived home. Adam waved Jessica into the living room with a cheeky grin, asking if she fancied one more drink. Considering she planned, after seeing Adam off to work in the morning, to spend the rest of the day in bed, Jessica figured it couldn’t do much harm.

They giggled their way into the room like a pair of teenagers left on their own for the first time. Adam took a pair of shot glasses and half-full vodka bottle out of the cabinet underneath the television and poured them each a glass. They flopped on the sofa and toasted their first meal out alone together for months. Jessica enjoyed the burn of the liquid on her throat and reached for the bottle, pouring another. Adam shook his head: ‘I’ve got work tomorrow.’

Jessica didn’t let that stop her, downing the second shot in one and slumping even deeper into the cushions of the sofa.

‘Something’s different,’ Adam said, out of the blue.

‘What?’

‘I’m not sure – but something’s not quite right in here.’

Jessica poured – and drank – a third shot. Perhaps moving onto lates wasn’t a bad thing after all if it meant she had more evenings off in between times to hang around with Adam and go drinking. ‘I think you’ve had too much to drink,’ she said.

‘You’re the one slurring your words.’

‘Am not.’

Adam sounded as if he was about to say something but then he paused, biting his lip. ‘The candlesticks are missing.’

Jessica squinted towards the shelf they’d sat atop since they had partially unpacked but Adam was right – they had gone.

29

The alcohol helped Jessica sleep but Holden Wyatt, Damon Potter, Cassie Edmonds, Grace Savage, Bones, DCI Cole, Assistant Chief Constable Graham Pomeroy and strange curved symbols were haunting her.

Then there was Bex.

Jessica had checked through the gap between the door and the frame before she’d gone to bed but the teenager was in the same position she’d been in for the past few nights: curled into a ball under the bed covers, breathing deeply. Everything Adam had said at the restaurant was correct – but Jessica so wanted to help and knowing Bex had a roof over her head and food in her stomach was one of the few things that had got her through the week.

Although she knew she had to be up through the night, Jessica got up early and waited in the kitchen. She put some toast on for Adam, kissed him goodbye and then waited some more. She heard Bex moving around upstairs at twenty past nine and then the sound of the shower. Just before ten, the teenager emerged into the kitchen humming a song that Jessica didn’t know. Her long black hair was wet and loose, the damp ends creating a wet patch on the oversized T-shirt Adam had given her; the angular tattoo on her arm was bold and bright. Her slim legs hardly seemed to have the width to support the rest of her frame as she padded barefoot into the room, stopping when she noticed Jessica.

‘Oh, you’re up,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be sleeping most of the day.’

‘I probably will be. Do you want something to eat?’

Bex grinned, chewing on the corners of her mouth hungrily. ‘I shouldn’t keep eating your food.’

‘Maybe we should sit down one evening and have a talk about things?’

Jessica didn’t know how Bex would take it but the teenager nodded and grinned again. Her face had started to fill out slightly over the past few days, which was perhaps no surprise seeing as she couldn’t have got any thinner.

Jessica dropped a couple more slices of bread into the toaster and then started hunting through the cereal packets in the cupboard. That was the other thing about letting Adam do the food shopping by himself: he bought lots of cereal. If he could get away with eating it three times a day, he probably would.

Moments later and Bex was mashing a Shredded Wheat into a Weetabix while taking a bite of toast. Jessica took a strange pleasure in watching someone clearly so in need of food being able to wolf down the contents of her cupboards. That was until she felt self-conscious that she was turning into her mother. When Jessica had been a child, her mum constantly used to invite her primary school friends around after classes and then spend the evening trying to feed them as much as human beings could fit into themselves. Things hadn’t changed by the time Jessica took Adam home for the first time. Her mother had frowned in disapproval at his slender frame and then spent an hour finding out exactly which foods he liked so she could shove them down his gullet over the course of an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon. It must be a mumsy thing – and the fact that Jessica could happily keep making food for Bex, even though she rarely bothered to make anything for herself, was a worrying development.

That wasn’t the only worrying thing.

‘What did you get up to last night?’ Jessica asked.

Munch, munch, munch.

‘I had a walk to the end of your road and then carried on to the shops and back. It was nice to get some air but then it started getting cold again and I was convinced that I’d left the door unlocked. I’m not used to locking things.’

‘Had you?’

‘No, it’s one of those things where you know you’ve done something but your mind won’t switch off from it until you check. I sort of . . .’

Bex tailed off, delving into the mushy remains of her cereal and drawing her free hand across her chest protectively.

‘It’s okay.’

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

‘I’m a bit like that with my bag,’ Bex added. ‘It’s the only thing I have left from my mum’s house. All my clothes gradually became too big so I . . . got some more.’ She glanced away from the table guiltily. ‘I know how to pack it so that I can reach anything I need and then it has this sort of balance to it. But you end up getting paranoid if it doesn’t feel right. You think someone’s been nicking off you while you’ve been asleep, so you’re constantly on edge. Even though I know I’ve packed it right, I still get that urge to check it. I know it’s mad.’

Jessica knew it wasn’t. When you owned hardly anything, it made sense that you’d obsess over the things you did.

‘How long were you out for last night?’

Bex lifted the bowl and drank the dregs of the milk at the bottom. ‘I don’t know – an hour? Should I have stayed in?’

‘No, it’s not that, it’s just . . .’ To compound the fact that Jessica didn’t know which words to use, Bex took that moment to peer up from the table and smile at her. Whether she’d got her looks from her junkie mother or absent father, Bex really was naturally pretty, despite the slight hollowness she still had in her face. ‘. . . do you remember the candlesticks from the other room?’

‘You said they’d survived a fire.’

‘Right . . . it’s just they’re missing . . .’

Bex bit through the triangle of toast and then carefully put it back on the plate. She kept her eyes fixed on Jessica as she chewed, saying nothing. Jessica tried to read her face, her posture, anything; but there was only a darkness that hadn’t been there before. Suddenly Jessica saw the Bex she didn’t know – the street Bex, the girl who’d seen and survived things as a fourteen-year-old that Jessica didn’t even want to guess about. Her pointed shoulders had angled forward, pressing into the material of the T-shirt, her eyebrows had turned into a V, with vertical crease lines in the centre of her forehead.

Bex’s voice had dropped an octave into a forced calmness. ‘What are you trying to say?’