Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Caroline Green 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photographs © Mark Owen/Trevillion Image;

Shutterstock.com (trees)

Caroline Green asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008248956

Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008248963

Version: 2020-10-15

Dedication

For all the orphans I know,

and the ones I’ve never met.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Cass Green

About the Publisher

1

Neve stares up at the nicotine-yellow ceiling and thinks about the long journey between here and her own bed. Or at least, the sofa bed in her sister’s flat.

She has a fierce longing for ice-cold Diet Coke and paracetamol. Her head is already starting to hurt and she hasn’t been asleep. She needs to pee, badly.

Squinting at the small travel clock that blinks with neon aggression on the bedside table, she sees it is 03:00. They got here about two. The sex had taken about fifteen minutes, tops. Maybe she had briefly fallen asleep after all.

Whatsisname sighs and gently farts in his sleep.

Christ.

He told her he had his own software company and was in London for a conference. But it didn’t ring true. Surely no one held conferences a few days before Christmas? Plus, he said ‘pacific’ instead of ‘specific’ and smiled in a glazed, uncomprehending way at a couple of her more acerbic comments. He didn’t seem bright enough to have his own company.

Now she slowly begins to extricate herself from the bed, placing her bare feet down onto the rough, worn carpet. It feels greasy and gritty. She curls her toes with a shudder and spots the squished comma of the condom lying next to the bed.

The air smells of hot dust from the ferocious radiator that’s within touching distance of the bed, with a base note of damp.

The outside of the hotel – which was grandly named the Intercontinental, London – had looked alright with its jaunty blue and white awning, potted plants and fairy-lit windows.

Neve has always been a sucker for fairy lights.

But the room, with its shabby MDF table and undersized kettle, feels like the kind of place travelling salesmen go to commit suicide. There’s a white extension cable snaking across the middle of the floor and she makes a mental note that she mustn’t trip over it on her way to the bathroom. The wallpaper is the textured sort popular in the 1970s, splashed lumpily with a jaundice-yellow emulsion.

Whatsisname’s (Greg? Gary? Something like that) wheelie case is sitting open on a chair next to the table. The arm of a jumper hangs languidly towards the carpet. She pictures him getting ready earlier, selecting a shirt that would mean the best chance of getting laid. Well, it had worked.

Self-disgust puffs through her like hot steam. She has somehow bypassed the numb, unconscious part of this scenario and gone straight to the hangover and guilt. She’s suddenly appalled by the idea of him waking and suggesting she come back to bed. Or, worse, wanting conversation.

This whole thing had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Her own office party – dinner in an uninspiring Italian restaurant, followed by drinks in a bar near Waterloo – had ended early because, in her view, her colleagues were a bunch of lightweights, all making excuses about babysitters or night buses or I’ve-had-quite-enough-haven’t-you? Well, no, she hadn’t, clearly.

Her usual ally and best friend, Miri, was too pregnant to last beyond eight p.m. and Neve’d had to work hard, again, not to make a wistful comment about the fun they’d once had on nights out. She knew that Miri might as well be emigrating to the other side of the world soon. Nothing was ever going to be the same again between them. Watching Miri expand and step tentatively into this new world, she felt jabs of real grief.

So when someone decent looking had come over and bought her another bucket-glass of Merlot, she hadn’t said no. Plus, she wasn’t wearing her contacts and was drunk enough that everyone looked quite attractive in their own way. And he was Irish and therefore exotic.

She can almost hear Lou saying, ‘You’re thirty now, Neve,’ in that mouth-like-a-cat’s-arse way she reserves for her only sister.

A wave of misery washes over her and she carefully gets up and starts to hunt for her knickers among the discarded clothes on the floor. She spots them lying in a forlorn figure of eight where she’d shucked them off earlier.

She’d already been thinking this was a mistake by then. The kissing – hard up against a doorway outside the bar – hadn’t been that promising. His tongue had been a muscular slug that poked and jabbed at the inside of her mouth as though on a mission to find something.

Now Neve fumbles for her bra and, once on, reaches for the gold silky top she’d bought especially for the night out. She’d been delighted with it at the time because it was half price, but wearing it she’d discovered that it made her sweat under the arms. She’d spilled red wine down it earlier too. She wrinkles her nose as she rolls the top over her head and down her body.

‘You leaving?’

The voice makes her jump. She turns to see Whatsisname looking up at her from the rumpled bed, propping himself up on pale, muscular arms.

‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘Um … I’d better get going.’ She smiles as though they’d just had a casual coffee together instead of a joyless, drunken shag. ‘I’ll just …’ she hooks a thumb in the direction of the bathroom and then goes in, closing the door behind her as she pees.

She quickly washes her hands and avoids her reflection, aware it will only make her feel worse in the circumstances. Maybe she is faster than he expected, because when she comes back into the room a minute later, he’s leaning out of the bed, vigorously checking the pockets of his trousers that are pooled next to it.

He stops and regards her with a sheepish shrug.

Realization burns. ‘What the actual fuck?’ she says. ‘Did you think I was going to take your wallet?’

Her head is far too sore to be speaking this loud. But it’s better than smashing him in the face with the travel kettle, which she might do otherwise.

‘I don’t really know you, do I?’ he says, defiantly raising his chin.

‘No you don’t,’ she hisses, hunting for her bag and shrugging on her coat. It feels as though these actions take far longer than they should.

Finally, she is able to take the few paces to the hotel door.

‘By the way, you’re shit in bed,’ she says as she wrenches it open. ‘Merry Christmas, arsehole!’

She wants to slam the door behind her but it’s on one of those safety hinges and, instead, it gently closes with a disappointing sigh.

The word ‘Bitch’ is lobbed through before it shuts.

Outside on the street, she pulls her fake fur coat together at the throat. Fury pumps through her. She half thinks about going back and giving him a further piece of her mind.

But instead, she walks away, her high heels ringing out against a pavement that’s glossy with recent rain. She swallows down a surge of self-pity and blinks hard, trying to concentrate on which way to go.

Neve has a terrible sense of direction. Several boyfriends, and Lou, have claimed not to believe quite how poor it is, as if getting lost often is some sort of affectation. As if it is a choice, to experience the freefall sensation of panic when you don’t really know where the hell you’re going.

At the end of the street she stops and considers which way to turn.

There’s some sort of factory on the opposite corner and she’s sure now that they passed it. So she heads off that way, praying that she will find herself somewhere near Waterloo. If she can get over the water to the Embankment, she can probably find a night bus.

Her shoes chafe the backs of her heels and her teeth are gently chattering with the bitter cold. Whatsisface had a fashionable beard and it feels now as if a cheese grater has been taken to her chin. She’ll have to slather it with E45 when she gets home or she’ll look like she’s been sunburned. And Lou will be all over that in the morning.

It’s like being seventeen again, and not in any good way.

Neve takes another turning and begins to feel the usual thrum of worry that she’s going in the entirely wrong direction to where she wants to be. But she keeps moving and soon finds herself on a promisingly major road. Tall brown buildings soar on either side, glass-fronted windows lifeless, and a long row of bikes for hire seem to be resting like a tired herd.

Before long, she can see the distinctive glass sphere of the IMAX building by Waterloo and she lets out a breath of relief that curls in the frigid night air.

She’s grateful for the few other people around now, either party-goers draped in tinsel, laughing and shouting to each other, or London’s invisible army of workers dressed in cheap, sensible coats; heads down, hurrying from one service job to another.

Neve isn’t nervous about walking alone in London at night. It’s the sort of thing her parents would have fretted about but now … well, there’s only Lou and hopefully she’s asleep. She has only once been the victim of a crime, when her phone was stolen from her bag in a nightclub. The thief had clearly decided it wasn’t new enough to keep anyway, because it had been dropped in the beer and dirt and found by the doorman.

She hurries on, wondering whether Miri will find this a funny story tomorrow or give her friend the new look, the one that is just ever-so-slightly disapproving.

Neve tries to remember exactly where she can get the night bus to Kentish Town. Then, with a cold plop of realization in her stomach, she remembers taking her keys out of her bag that morning because a pen had leaked in the front pocket. She can picture them, still lying on the big kitchen table. Frantically, she begins feeling around inside her bag now, but knows by the lack of heft in the pocket that they’re not there. She closes her eyes for a moment and says, ‘Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit.’

Lou will have a field day with this. The whole house will get woken up.

She can hear her now, with her martyr face on: ‘It’s about time you took control of your life.’

Neve has been staying with her sister, brother-in-law and their two children since breaking up with Daniel, six weeks before. It feels so very much longer.

If she could go and sleep under her desk, she would, but she’d need a key for that too. It’s too cold to hang about, and anyway, it will probably take forever to get home. Maybe her sister will be up with the baby by then.

She hurries on towards Waterloo Bridge.

2

It’s surprisingly quiet. Apart from the occasional vehicle hissing past on the damp road, she has the bridge to herself. She stomps onward, ignoring the bright blue corona of the London Eye to her left and the comforting glowing face of Big Ben across the water. Normally she gets a thrill from these sights; loves the reassurance that she no longer lives in a tiny village near Leeds. But it’s too cold and too late for that.

Here, exposed on the bridge, the knifing wind feels mean and personal so she tries to tuck herself down into her coat, tortoise-like.

When she sees the figure ahead of her, she has the disorientating sensation that it is a hallucination, or even something ghostly. It’s partly because of the paleness of the woman’s skin and hair, combined with the clingy, bone-coloured dress. Maybe it’s the sheer incredulity she feels on registering that the woman wears no coat in the small hours of this December night.

The woman stands on the left, facing towards Blackfriars Bridge and the gold-lit Parliament, staring out over the water. She is very still.

Neve involuntarily shivers at the sight of the woman’s thin, bare arms, which hang by her sides. In one hand she carries a small, silver clutch bag.

As Neve approaches, the woman turns to her, with a hopeful look on her face. Neve feels the stab of embarrassment of the Londoner, despite the late hour and the strangeness of the encounter. She dips her head but can tell the woman is watching her. She turns, reluctantly, to face her again.

‘Look, are you okay?’ she says. Her voice sounds hoarse from the cigarettes she smoked with Whatsisface earlier. ‘Haven’t you got anything else to put on?’

The woman shakes her head in a quick, sharp movement and then smiles with something like sympathy. It’s almost as if Neve is the odd, vulnerable one rather than the other way around.

Make-up-less, apart from a slash of scarlet lipstick, the woman is startlingly beautiful, with wide pale eyes and a full mouth. Unlike Neve’s thick, dark blonde hair, the other woman’s is so pale it’s almost white. It is pinned at the sides and falls in silky waves around her thin, white shoulders. Her waxen skin is almost blue from the cold.

She’s clearly not poor, thinks Neve, eyeing her. The dress is made from some kind of ivory silk and clings fluidly to her slim frame. It’s almost unnatural, the way it hangs in a sweeping circle around her feet. A princess dress. The words float into Neve’s brain from some childish part of herself and she’s a little ashamed.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asks with a sigh. This one brief exchange means she now has a sense of responsibility to this woman. It’s why no one usually bothers in London.

She should know better. She delves into her handbag and pulls out her purse.

‘Look, I haven’t got much,’ she says, ‘but I can probably stand you a night bus. What happened to your coat?’

A particularly vicious gust of wind sweeps across the bridge, making both women take a step to the side. The bitter cold is ramping up Neve’s headache now and the other woman’s silence is starting to get on her nerves. Maybe she doesn’t speak English?

Neve has had enough and is about to walk away when the other woman finally speaks.

‘You’re lovely,’ she says. Not only is she English, but she has the refined, smooth voice of the girls who always looked down on Neve at school. The swishy-haired ones who dominated the sixth form common room.

‘I’m not, not really.’ Neve feels strangely annoyed by this compliment. ‘I can see how cold you are, that’s all.’ She pauses. ‘Look, I’ve just had a totally shit evening too. Is this about a bloke? Have you had a row with someone?’

The woman makes a non-committal sound that Neve takes to be assent and takes a step closer.

‘He’s not worth it,’ she says. ‘Trust me. And no offence, that’s a lovely dress and everything but you really will get hypothermia wandering about like that.’

‘What’s your name?’ the woman says quietly. Neve sighs again. Why did she get sucked into a conversation? Her instinct is to tell the woman to mind her own business but she is too tired now. Her heels hurt. Her head aches. It’s freezing here.

‘It’s Neve.’ Neve wraps her arms around herself as a shudder of cold mingles with a yawn.

‘Neve … what?’ says the woman.

Neve stares at her.

‘Why?’

‘Please?’ says the woman, and her eyes sparkle. She makes a small, desolate sound in her throat. Neve takes another step towards her.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Don’t cry.’

‘Please,’ says the woman emphatically. ‘Can you just tell me your name?’

Neve stares at her for a moment before replying. ‘Neve … Neve Carey. Um, what’s yours?’

‘Isabelle,’ says the woman in barely a whisper, and then, with more force, ‘Neve, will you do something for me?’

She pictures herself getting on the night bus with this strange wraithlike creature and both of them rocking up at Lou’s. Clearing her throat, she has to work hard not to sound sulky.

‘Uh, yes, I guess,’ she says. ‘But it depends on what it is.’

Isabelle opens the clutch bag and produces a small brown envelope. ‘I want you to take this.’

Neve hesitates and eyes it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a gift. For being kind to me.’

Neve takes a step back and holds up her palms. ‘Look, I’ve done nothing. I just don’t want you freezing to death on my conscience. I’m not that kind, trust me. I’m actually a bit of a cow. Ask anyone.’

‘You are kind,’ says Isabelle quietly. ‘I can sense it. Will you take this, just to humour me? Say you will. Say it.’

Neve stares back at the woman, discomfited by her intense, strange manner.

A passing car washes them with its headlights. For a moment Isabelle looks cadaverous, her eyes sunk in deep pockets of shadow.

‘It’s important,’ she says fiercely. ‘Please.’

Neve is so unnerved now that all she can do is thrust out her hand and take the envelope.

Isabelle’s shoulders droop and she seems to shrink in on herself.

‘Thank you,’ she says quietly. ‘Thank you so much.’

She fumbles inside the bag and, after producing a mobile phone, turns away and whispers something quietly into it. The she returns the phone to the bag and looks at Neve. Her eyes are gleaming now, as if she is close to tears.

‘You should go,’ she says thickly. ‘I’ll be fine here.’

It’s tempting.

Neve sighs heavily.

‘Come on,’ she says, ‘let’s get the fuck off this freezing cold bridge. Where do you need to get to? I can—’

‘No.’ The sharp retort makes her gasp. ‘I’m sorry. But you need to go now. Leave me here. You shouldn’t be—’

She seems to bite the end of her sentence off and, for the first time, Neve sees that she is terrified in a way Neve has never witnessed before in real life.

Neve crosses her arms.

‘No way,’ she says. ‘I’m not leaving you here. It’s bloody cold and—’

She yelps as Isabelle lunges, kissing her quickly on each cheek with cold, dry lips. Her grip is surprisingly strong. Neve feels a flash of fear as Isabelle’s lips brush her ear.

‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me. And keep it, if you can bear to.’

Then she turns to face the water and, in one neat movement, climbs over the side of the railing and jumps into the river.

3

Neve sits in the back of the police car now, wrapped in a silver thermal blanket as blue light smears rhythmically across the windows. The hiss and crackle of the radio begins to fade as icy rain pounds onto the roof of the vehicle.

The RNLI had arrived first, confusing her with their jaunty logo because she thought they were people who rescued you at sea. They came with astonishing speed after she made the call. Later she would learn that one of their emergency stations was situated close to Waterloo Bridge.

They arrived before the police. Neve’s phone had died before she could finish the conversation with the operator so for ten surreal minutes before the police car had arrived, she’d stood on the bridge alone, looking down at the boat as it turned slow circles in the blackness below, its spotlight swishing back and forth. She half thought about hurrying away and leaving them to it. But it seemed desperately sad that this stranger should have no one apart from the emergency services rooting for her to be found.

So instead she kept up the vigil, staring into the depths below. Her heart had jolted when she saw something white swell and roll in the water, then she realized it was a large plastic bottle. The sensation of relief, that she wouldn’t have to jump in and attempt a rescue, had almost buckled her at the knees.

Later, she would understand that no one would expect her – someone with only average swimming ability – to try and rescue a drowning woman from the Thames in winter. But guilt periodically comes in a bright, sharp jab under her ribs. This at least is a sensation she recognizes.

When the police arrived she’d told them what happened in jerky, shocked sentences. They’d gently encouraged her to start again from the beginning and tell them the whole story.

Now here she is, in the strange aftermath and she can’t stop shivering. Every now and then a particularly strong shudder jerks through her, which makes her clench her jaw. It’s unnerving. She read somewhere that shock can be dangerous in some physiological way she doesn’t really understand and wonders whether she ought to ask for something from the ambulance crew.

She looks out the window and sees through the condensation and raindrops that one of the RNLI men is talking to the policewoman. It’s the small, Northern one with tight curly hair and an efficient air about her. The policewoman nods and then glances at the car. Neve draws back, as though caught doing something wrong.

The door of the police car opens, but it is the young black officer who pokes his head in and peers at her.

‘You alright, love?’ he says gently. He has pretty eyes, thickly lashed, and a cold that clogs his voice and makes him fumble for a tissue. He honks into it and regards her.

Neve nods.

‘Look,’ he says, ‘we have been informed by the rescue crew that the tide is very strong tonight and the weather is taking a turn for the worse. They’ve made the decision that they aren’t going to continue the search.’ He pauses. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

His formal words are countered by the kindness in his face.

‘I think so,’ she says in a small voice. ‘There’s no hope. Will she just … stay down there?’

He makes a face.

‘Probably not,’ he continues, ‘but it can take a little while for, uh, people to wash up at this stretch of the Thames.’ He pauses. ‘Was she a friend of yours, the woman who jumped in?’

Neve swallows, picturing the moment again.

The shocking speed of it all. Cold, dry lips on her cheek and clawed hands gripping her shoulders. The bright flash of the dress as she tipped herself up and over into the black water.

‘I was just walking past,’ she says. ‘I don’t know her at all. I was just … going home and there she was. I started talking to her. And then she …’ she swallows. ‘She just did it. Right in front of me.’

The policeman makes an indeterminate sound of sympathy, his head to the side.

It’s only now Neve remembers the envelope, realizing she must have dropped it on the pavement in the shock of the moment. ‘Look, she gave me something,’ she says. ‘An envelope? There was something really strange about it. I only took it to stop her being weird.’ She swallows again, feels a tremble judder through her and then she laughs, loud and inappropriately. ‘But it didn’t work, did it!’

The policeman nods. ‘We’ve got that, also her phone and bag. In a bit we’ll get a written statement and then get you home. Bit of a rough night. You’ll feel better tomorrow.’

Neve nods gratefully, her eyes brimming.

4

It’s almost six a.m. when the police car pulls up in front of Lou and Steve’s building on a leafy street in Kentish Town. It’s still dark outside. Several windows are lit. A handful of people are quietly closing front doors, slinging bags over shoulders and jamming in earbuds, walking, hunched with fatigue, down the road to the tube.

Neve thanks the two police officers, noticing the lingering look from the attractive black one. As she closes the car door she realizes gratefully that she is so late home her sister will almost certainly be up, tending to her eleven-month-old baby, Maisie.

The car pulls away and Neve makes her way carefully down the slippery steps that lead to the kitchen.

Lou and Steve live on the bottom two floors of the tall Victorian building and she is hoping she can alert Lou’s attention through the window rather than ringing the bell and waking the entire household.

But she realizes with a sinking heart that all the lights are off in the kitchen. It would be typical if Maisie had chosen to sleep through for the first time ever, on this of all nights.

Then she sees her sister, swaddled in the long baggy cardigan she wears as a dressing gown at the sink, Maisie on her shoulder, as upright and alert as a meerkat. The baby sees her aunt and waves sweetly, opening and closing her fingers over her fist.

Neve returns the wave with a weak smile. Lou turns and Neve sees rather than hears her shocked yelp. Lou disappears back through the kitchen door and a few moments later the front door a level up is noisily unbolted and opened.

Lou stands in the entrance and peers out at her sister as she climbs the steps. Her face is puffy and Neve can see right away that she has had a bad night. Lou’s eyes look small and pink, like a rabbit’s. She has patches of dry skin on her cheeks, which are flushed, as though she is the one teething and not Maisie.

‘God, look at you,’ she says. ‘Is this you just coming home? I thought you were in bed. Oh … Neve? What on earth is it?’

Neve doesn’t have any more tears but is suddenly overcome with the need for human comfort. She stumbles towards her sister, longing to hide her face in the woollen softness of her ample shoulder. To be held like a child and told everything will be okay.

‘I can’t really …’ says Lou with a sharp laugh, ‘Maisie, stop wriggling!’ The little girl pushes against her aunty with hands and feet and revs like a car in protest. All three of them awkwardly clash against each other.

Cheeks flushed, Neve walks off into the kitchen.

She should know better, she thinks. They’ve never exactly been huggers, her and Louise.

She goes to the kettle and can feel it has only recently boiled. She opens the neatly labelled jar of coffee and taps some roughly into a mug that says, ‘WORLD’S NICEST MUMMY’, knowing it will annoy Lou that she is using this cup and that she isn’t bothering with a spoon.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ says Lou from the doorway. ‘Has something happened?’

Sloshing water from the kettle into the cup, Neve then fumbles in the drawer for a spoon and adds two spoons of sugar before lifting it to her lips and chugging the bitter, lukewarm coffee down. Lou and Steve don’t believe in proper coffee.

‘Honestly, Neve,’ Lou continues in a low, tolerant voice, ‘Lottie is getting to an age when she’s going to start asking questions about why her aunty has stayed out all night. You can’t just come in looking like something the cat dragged in when you are in a family home. Don’t you think that it’s time you—’

‘I watched a woman commit suicide tonight. Right in front of me.’

Lou’s eyes widen and she slaps her free hand across her mouth.

‘Oh God, no. Where? On the tube?’

Maisie grizzles. She buries her face into her mother’s shoulder, squidging her legs up and rounding her back.

Lou swings from side to side. She is always moving to some maternal metronome inside her, even when she isn’t holding a child. She shushes and pats the baby’s back, her eyes pinned to Neve’s face.

‘Where? What happened?’

Neve goes to fill the kettle again and Lou bustles over.

‘Here, let me get that. You sit down and tell me everything. You look awful. Are you warm enough?’ Lou is finally in her comfort zone. Looking after people’s physical needs is what she does best.

Neve does as she’s told, sitting, and shakes her head to indicate that no, she isn’t warm enough. She can’t envisage ever being warm again, in fact. Lou leaves the room and comes back with a travel blanket from the sofa. Neve wraps it around her neck and shoulders, trying to ignore the vaguely sickly smell emanating from it, thanks to various small, dirty hands.

As Lou makes her another coffee she begins to tell her about what happened, starting with walking across the bridge.

‘Wait,’ Lou interrupts her straight away, a deep frown on her face. ‘Was this after your work thing? Have you been at a police station all night?’

Neve sighs. She’s tempted to lie then she thinks, why should I?

‘I’d been back to someone’s house,’ she says, as a compromise. The hotel really does sound so sleazy. Despite their decidedly agnostic upbringing, Lou has turned a bit Christian since meeting church-goer Steve.

She looks her sister directly in the eye as she says this and Lou looks down at the baby’s head and pats her back gently.

‘Okay,’ she says patiently. ‘Go on …’

Neve tells her the rest of the story in a series of terse sentences.

‘What a thing,’ says Lou in wonder. ‘What a terrible thing.’

They sit in silence.

It is only as Neve is slipping gratefully into her chilly bed and fighting off the returning shivers that she remembers she didn’t tell her sister about the strange exchange with the envelope.

I wonder what was in it, she thinks as scrambled images race across her mind. Finally, as she begins to warm up for the first time since she left Whatsisname’s hotel room, she tips into sleep.

5

Neve doesn’t have any difficulty in recalling what happened when she wakes. There’s no moment of mental filing from night to day. It’s right there at the forefront of her mind.

A woman talked to me and then she jumped off the bridge.

Isabelle. Her name was Isabelle.

She cracks her sore eyes open and gazes up at the white meringue swirl of the ceiling rose above her.

From downstairs she hears the squawks and shrieks of CBeebies, Maisie’s low-level grizzling and the rumble of Steve’s voice.

The thought of being with them all makes her groan and turn her face into the pillow.

Steve has never actually said he doesn’t want her there. Neither has Lou.

But she sees the looks that slide between them when she’s forgotten to wash up, or left a glass and plate on the patio. Her toiletries had been a growing skyline on the bathroom shelf and every morning she sees that they have been tidied and grouped together. Steve practically follows her around with a dustpan and brush.

It’s not like she’s deliberately taking the piss. She really is grateful that they’re putting her up like this. It’s just that mess seems to follow her. She can enter a room and within minutes has laid her keys in one place, her handbag somewhere else and where did she put her phone again?

Steve doesn’t drink much, doesn’t smoke and doesn’t even swear. He runs, he cycles, he plays five-a-side football with people from the large insurance company where he works. He has two comfortably off parents and likes to think of himself as a hands-on dad to his daughters.

He is almost completely lacking in a sense of humour.

Unfortunately, people like Steve bring out the worst in Neve. The little pursed crease at the corner of his mouth as she sloshes more red wine into a glass, or says, ‘Fuck me, it’s cold,’ only eggs her on.

She’d passed him on the way back from the shower early the other morning, dressed in only a towel. He’d kept his eyes so averted it had given her a wicked urge to drop the towel just to see what would happen. He’d probably have spontaneously combusted, like that picture of the sad stockinged leg in a pile of ash she’d seen in her dad’s old Unexplained part-work magazine as a little girl.

Steve’s prudishness has got worse since an evening a couple of weeks before. They’d all got unexpectedly drunk together. Steve only had a couple of beers but had loosened up enough that Neve found herself quite liking him.

But she’d made a smutty joke while helping him load the dishwasher after Lou had stumbled off to bed and he’d reacted as though he’d been bitten by a snake. Neve can’t even really remember what she’d said now. Somehow, his brain had interpreted this as her coming on to him in some way and ever since he’d avoided eye contact.

He clearly thought she was some sort of mad sex fiend now who would jump on him, were it not for the restraints of him being married to her older sister.

It was all so tedious.

Neve gets out of bed feeling like an old woman and wraps herself in her dressing gown before heading to the bathroom. Thank God it’s Saturday, although these days, the pleasures of the weekend are tempered by being a) more or less homeless and b) miserably single.

When she goes into the kitchen she sees Steve at the sink, carefully cutting sandwiches into fingers. He has already been for a run; she can tell by the ruddy glow of his cheeks. He will no doubt have a long cycle later, just at the time the girls are needing their tea. Neve has noticed this, that he manages to live exactly like he had before kids, yet gets praised for the little he does with them.

‘Morning,’ she says and goes to fill the kettle.

‘Lou told me what happened,’ says Steve, without preamble. ‘That sounds a bit grim.’

She’s about to reply when a high fluting voice floats through from the adjoining sitting room.

‘What’s grim, Daddy?’

Lottie appears below them. She peers up, scrutinizing them. Neve loves her four-year-old niece but somehow always feels as though she has been assessed and found to be wanting in some way. Maybe it’s a genetic thing.

She has black hair like her mother, but it bounces and jiggles around her head in spirals. Her eyes are very pale blue, like Steve’s, and her small snub nose is dusted with dark freckles.

Steve reaches over and chucks her under the chin.

‘Never you mind, Miss Lotts. Are you ready to go to the Heath?’

But Lottie is not to be deterred so easily.

‘Did something happen to Aunty Neve?’ she says. Neve and Steve exchange glances.

‘Why would you say that?’ says Steve.

The little girl hoicks her cuddly lamb higher under her armpit and regards them both seriously.

‘Because Mummy said you must be nice to her today and you said God, I’ll try but I’m not promising anything. And then Mummy hit you on the arm.’

Steve barks a sharp embarrassed laugh. ‘Well …’

Neve smiles weakly.

‘I’m fine, Lot,’ she says. ‘Nothing wrong with me, look.’ She holds her arms up and does a strange little turn. She’s not sure why she has done it.

Lottie runs back into the living room, mind already elsewhere. Steve ferociously begins organizing snacks, head bent as he chops carrots and decants houmous into a Tupperware pot.

Neve makes herself coffee and toast.

‘Anyway,’ says Steve now in a low voice. ‘Sorry about the … thing … that happened. Must have been rough to see.’

‘Thanks,’ murmurs Neve. ‘It was.’

Half an hour later the family are ready to go. Maisie arches her back and complains as she is strapped into the buggy, while Lou says encouraging things with a bright, cheerful voice that feels like nails on glass to Neve’s ear.

They call goodbye to Neve, who collapses with relief onto the sofa and takes out her phone, grateful that she remembered to charge it when she got home.

Her thumb moves across the screen and before she can stop herself she has stroked up Daniel’s number. She hovers over it, filled with a dragging desire to speak to him.

Before she can change her mind she taps out a message.

Can I come round 2 pick up few things?

She hesitates and then adds an N and an X. Just the one.

Neve is suddenly desperate to tell him what happened last night and once again begins to shuffle through the pack of images in her head.

She thinks about the first sight of her, Isabelle, looking across the water. It seems strange now that Neve’s first thought wasn’t that she was a potential suicide. Ridiculous, in fact. But she’d been cold and tired. Still a bit drunk, not to mention a little humiliated by what had happened with Whatsisname. She wasn’t really thinking straight.

With a shiver she remembers those last seconds; the cold lips on her cheek and the whispered words in her ear.

What had she said? She should remember a soon-to-be-dead woman’s last words. Isn’t that the very least she can do?

Neve holds her head tightly in her hands and stares at the wooden floorboards splashed with pale winter sun, trying to dredge up the exact memory.

But it has gone.

So instead she taps on Safari and searches for local news about a woman jumping off a bridge. Of course there is nothing. She realizes as she is doing it that this is not even news for London. She wonders how many people have thrown themselves into the Thames in the last year. Probably loads.

Her phone pings with a text and she snatches it up.

Not around much this week and away for Xmas. Can we make it in the NY.

There’s no question mark. No D. And no X.

And before she gets any warning that it is coming, she is crying. Hard, hot tears course down her face and she clamps her arms around herself, rocking with grief.

6

Neve’s office is set to close for Christmas a couple of days later.

Portland Cavendish Crafts is a publisher of specialist magazines on Gray’s Inn Road. Across from the reception desk at which Neve sits for eight mind-numbingly boring hours every day is a stand filled with various magazines with cheerful titles in colourful fonts, titles such as Cross Stitch Crazy and Creative Craft Weekly.

When she had first started here, she’d vaguely thought she might become a journalist. Wasn’t this the kind of career thing successful people said? They were all, ‘Oh, I started out making tea and now I am the Controller of the BBC,’ and the like. She imagined herself laughing fondly about the funny old magazines she used to write for, before she was taken on in some blurrily defined way for a more glamorous position elsewhere.

She doesn’t particularly want to be a journalist anyway, which is a good thing because five years on she’s still answering the telephone and saying, ‘PCC, can I help you?’

More often than not she says, ‘No, I’m sorry, this isn’t the Police or the Press Complaints Commission,’ and, ‘No, that’s IPC. It’s a different magazine company.’

The rest of the time she photocopies things and tries to do as little work as humanly possible while still getting paid a salary. A terrible salary, but it had been just enough to live on when she was with Daniel.

Now that she is staying with Lou and Steve, it’s almost but not quite enough to live on. But it certainly isn’t enough to live on judging by the flat shares she sees circled pointedly in Biro by Steve on the dining room table.

This is one of the things that causes icy licks of fear in Neve’s stomach late at night.

Now she attends to the few admin jobs required before the office closes and ponders miserably the thought of a whole week under Lou and Steve’s feet.

His prim parents are coming for Christmas Day and she can already feel the claustrophobia of sitting around the table and wishing someone else would have a second glass of wine.

She hears a loud out-breath now and looks up to see Miri, bent over the photocopier. Her friend is tiny – barely five feet – and with her swollen body is now almost as wide as she is tall. She kneads a fist into her back and groans quietly.

Neve told Miri all about the woman on the bridge as soon as she was back at work. Once, Miri would have been agog at a story like this but late pregnancy has made her formerly feisty friend oddly fearful about the world. Miri looked away from her as she described the moment Isabelle jumped off the bridge; Neve had sensed she didn’t really want to hear it, even though she had made the right noises and hugged her friend awkwardly, the hard bullet of her belly nudging Neve’s side.

A few moments later she had scurried away, eyes gleaming. It made Neve feel as though she was the one who had done something shocking and violent.

She’s gazing balefully at her friend now when someone comes through the double doors and stops by the desk. It’s Fraser, the editor of Modeller Monthly, a magazine filled with stories about model trains that is, bafflingly to Neve, one of CPP’s best sellers.

He’s only in his thirties but favours tweedy academic-looking jackets and, with his unfashionable glasses and thin pale hair, looks much older. He behaves as though he’s the editor of a major broadsheet and heaven help anyone who cracks jokes about the readership, as Neve has done many times.

It’s why, she thinks, he likes to throw his weight around with her, and gets her to do silly little admin jobs he’s perfectly capable of doing himself.

She pretends not to notice him, so he has to clear his throat. It’s childish, but she takes her pleasures where she can in this job. Looking up, she rewards him with a beaming smile, all teeth and sparkly eyes, which makes the tips of his ears flush almost purple.

‘Uh, yes, Neve,’ he says, quickly, ‘I wonder if I can trouble you to do something for me.’

Neve leans over, conspiratorial, and says, ‘Fraser, you know that serving your needs is what I live for.’

She’s hoping Miri will hear and that they can snigger about it later, but she glances over to see that Miri has finished her copying job and gone.

‘I did actually email you about this earlier,’ Fraser says pointedly and Neve, chastised, lets her grin slide away.

‘Phones have been crazy,’ she lies.

‘Yes, well, anyway, there was a problem with some of the subs for Creative Stamp Monthly and Weave It,’ he says. ‘I need you to send out a standard apology letter to the readers affected.’ He pauses and his eyes gleam as he adds, ‘There are quite a few. Should keep you busy for a while.’ He hands her a sheet of paper, dense with names and addresses.

Neve takes it from him and murmurs that she will get on to it. As he moves away with his quick, pigeon-toed walk, she watches him go and thinks there’s no sport in this job any more. She is suddenly filled with an overwhelming weariness.

She turns the switchboard to the answering machine and goes to the Ladies to hide for a while. Inside the cubicle she blows her nose furiously until the desire to cry passes.

When she is washing her hands she hears a flushing toilet. She’d thought she was the only one in there and is relieved when it’s Miri who emerges from the cubicle.

‘Christ on a bike,’ says her friend. ‘I swear it would be easier to wear a nappy and be done with it. That’s the sixth time I’ve had to pee since nine.’ She pauses and sees Neve’s blotchy face. ‘Oh, what’s the matter, honey? Thinking about Mum and Dad?’

One of the many reasons Neve loves Miri is that her friend is capable of mentioning Neve’s orphan state.

Neve shrugs and washes her hands. When she speaks, her voice is thick and snotty.

‘Not really. Just … this place, you know? Can’t believe I’m still here sometimes.’

Miri washes her hands and regards her in the mirror, her brow creased and her eyes soft.

‘Well you’re not alone there,’ she says kindly. ‘Anyway, not long now until the holidays.’

Neve snorts, impatiently.

‘Yeah, I’m really excited about Christmas,’ she says, deadpan, then makes a doomy face in the mirror.

‘Spending it with Mr and Mrs Tight Arse?’ says Miri doing a pert, rabbitty gesture with hands bent like paws.

‘Yep,’ says Neve. ‘Yay.’

Miri sighs. ‘You know I’d have you to mine in a shot,’ she says, ‘but I have several million aunties and uncles coming over in order to create my own festive hell.’ She slips into a broad Indian accent and waggles her head, ‘You need to eat a bit more, Amira-Ji, or that baby is going to come out a lanky bean like his father.’

Neve laughs as she throws the tissue into the bin.

‘Arjan is dreading it,’ continues Miri with a sigh. ‘It’s his first one where he hasn’t been on call and he’d rather be there. Can you imagine preferring to help sick people than have a family gathering? That’s my lot for you.’ Miri holds her hand up with a flourish, as though revealing words on a banner. ‘The Sharma family: Not quite as much fun as a winter vomiting virus.’

Neve laughs and feels cheered up, a little.

Miri pauses before speaking. ‘Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Did you find out anything else about that woman? The one who killed herself?’

Neve shakes her head, mood instantly sinking again. ‘I tried Googling it,’ she says. ‘But I think too many people in London top themselves for it to be news.’

Miri makes a disapproving sound in her throat. ‘That’s depressing. Still,’ she says, perking up, ‘for all you know, they may have rescued her. Why don’t you ring the police and ask someone? You have the right to know. You were there, after all.’

Neve takes her mobile out into the stairwell for privacy.

It takes ages for her to be put through to anyone who can help. She starts off with 999, then is directed to another department. Finally, after being on hold for almost five minutes, she’s connected with a bored-sounding woman who tells her someone will look on the system for further information and then puts her on hold again.

Neve sighs and entertains the possibility of hanging up. But no, she needs to see this through.

Eventually a different woman comes to the phone. She sounds a little warmer.

‘Hello, you were asking about the suicide from Waterloo Bridge on December twenty-first?’ she says.

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Neve’s heart speeds up and she finds herself clutching the receiver, her hand damp. There’s a pause.

‘I’m afraid a body was found the following morning.’

‘Oh …’ Neve puffs out the word in a sigh. She didn’t know what else she had been expecting, but the news still feels electric and cold in her stomach.

‘Did you know the individual?’ the woman continues brightly.

‘Well, no, I was just there. You see …’

She finds herself recounting the whole thing again, while the woman on the other end of the phone clucks, ‘Oh dear’ and ‘What a shame,’ at key points.

When she has finished, the woman lowers her voice a fraction before speaking again. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘It’s very common in these situations to feel guilty and think you could have done something. But put it this way, this was someone who was serious.’

‘What do you mean?’ says Neve, sitting forward in her chair.

‘Well,’ there’s a pause, ‘she made certain provisions to make sure she sank quickly.’

Neve quickly scans her memories of what the woman, Isabelle, had looked like. There was no coat that could be filled with stones, à la Virginia Woolf. She wasn’t carrying anything. So how on earth did she weigh herself down enough to drown? She pictures that silky dress, clinging to Isabelle’s thin frame. The swishiness of it and the jarring sense that it was from another, more glamorous time.

‘I just don’t get it,’ she says miserably. ‘She was only wearing an evening dress.’

There’s a brief silence and then the woman speaks all in a rush. ‘Look, I’m not sure whether I ought to release this information without the family’s permission but you were the one who had to see it all so, well …’

She clears her throat and lowers her voice further. ‘It was the hem of her dress, you see,’ she says. ‘She’d sewed lead curtain tape all around the bottom of it. This was enough extra weight for someone of that size to sink.’

Neve’s stomach lurches. ‘Oh God,’ she says. ‘That’s awful.’

‘Yes, it’s terrible,’ says the woman. ‘She had obviously done her homework. In that stretch of the Thames, most people are rescued before there’s any prospect of drowning, you see. Such a shame. She really meant business, the poor thing.’

7

‘No more for me, thanks Stephen.’ Steve’s mother Celia puts a small, neat hand, tipped with shell-pink polish, on top of her glass of wine. She has been nursing the same glass for the last two hours.

Her husband Bill is engaging their son in a lengthy discussion about the shortcomings of the M4 and the A406. This is a follow-on from the same conversation earlier.

Steve nods and is trying to look interested, while simultaneously shooting looks at his small daughter, who is sitting with a mutinous expression on her face. Lottie has been recently reprimanded by her grandmother for whining and looks ready to blow at any moment.

They are sitting at the table with the wreckage of Christmas dinner in front of them. The gold tablecloth is a battleground of spilled peas, which Lottie had refused to eat, rings from glasses and small lumpy mounds of red wax from the festive candle that is melting like a squashed volcano in the middle of the table.

Neve stifles a yawn.

Today seems to have been going on for an eternity. At five a.m. she was woken from a dream about Daniel by the study door opening and the sound of feet padding across the floorboards.

She’d kept her eyes firmly closed, then felt laboured breathing hot on her cheek. After a moment Lottie had announced in a stage whisper that, ‘Mummy and Daddy say it is too early to see if Santa has been.’

‘That’s because it is too early,’ Neve had groggily replied. Then, when Lottie showed no sign of going back to bed, ‘Why don’t you go and have a look on your own?’

She hadn’t even been aware, really, of what she was saying; she’d only wanted Lottie to go away. And she certainly didn’t remember saying, ‘Yes, you definitely are allowed to get started on the presents,’ as was later claimed by the little curly-haired Judas.

But it turned out she had committed a crime of major proportions an hour later when she heard raised voices from the sitting room.

Lottie had gaily skipped away and unwrapped everything under the tree, including everyone else’s gifts. She had eaten a whole selection box and was starting on the handmade Belgian chocolates meant for her grandma before anyone else got up.

Lou had been tearful because a special moment – when the family all discovered the presents together – had been ruined. She had been planning to film the whole thing. Lou was, in Neve’s opinion, an obsessive chronicler of her family life. She would have unfollowed her sister on Facebook because of this, had she been able to get away with it.

Steve, surveying his guilty-faced daughter, and the colourful piles of ripped paper, wore an expression that wasn’t at all Christian. Neve was in the doghouse.

He spent the rest of the morning cooking and refused all offers of help, while retaining a beleaguered air.

Lou has been brittle with tension all day. She doesn’t like Celia and Bill, Neve knows this. But she seems to think that if she refrains from criticizing them, even to Neve, then she will somehow find a deeper reservoir of tolerance.

Neve has resolved to be the model guest for the rest of the day. When Bill resorts to one of his favourite topics of conversation – namely, the fact that the ‘UK is an island with limited resources and it’s time something was done about our border controls’ – Neve smiles sweetly and suggests she clear the table and wash up.

Celia regards her as she hands over her smeared plate.

‘So how is the flat hunting going, Neve?’ she says. Neve hears Lou quietly sigh.

‘Bit slowly,’ she says with a small laugh. ‘Everywhere is so expensive. But I am looking!’ She sets her jaw as she picks up more plates, hoping for a quick exit from this conversation. But Celia isn’t finished.

‘Have you ever thought about moving back to your home town?’ she says. ‘Do you have any people there? Remind me. I mean,’ she adds, hurriedly, ‘I know you don’t have your mum and dad any more, but is there anyone else? Wider family?’

Lou shoots her a panicked look. Celia knows full well that Lou and Neve are the only ones left. Steve has two siblings with five children between them, several aunts and uncles, and his grandparents only died in the last couple of years. He’s positively rotten with family, thinks Neve. He has no idea what it is like to be an island that only contains two, yet is still somehow crowded.

She feels a sharp tug of love for her sister now and the urge to say something shocking and untrue, like, ‘No one that isn’t inside,’ but knows her sister will be even more upset with her.

Neve decides to ignore the question.

‘Shall I make you some tea, when I’m done washing up?’

Wrong-footed, Celia blinks at her without replying.

Neve’s phone buzzes in her pocket then and, despite herself, she can’t resist sliding it out and glancing at the screen.

It’s from Miri and says simply SHOOT ME NOW. Neve smiles weakly.

Lou is watching her with a similar expression to the one she keeps flicking towards her eldest daughter. Neve knows that her sister is wondering, constantly, about whether she is in communication with Daniel. Neve decides to put her out of her misery.

‘Miri says hi,’ she says.

Bill seems to wake up at this. ‘Miri. Now that’s an unusual name. English girl, is she?’

‘Yes,’ says Neve as she heads towards the kitchen. ‘Her full name is Amira Sharma-Kapoor.’ She looks back over her shoulder and adds, ‘She was born in Croydon.’

At the sink she can’t stop the grin at the silence in her wake. She can picture Bill and Celia exchanging glances. She attacks the washing up with fast efficiency, hoping that no one will offer to help her.

Bill and Celia retire to the sofa now and Celia is tasked with trying to put batteries into one of the few plastic toys Lottie has been allowed to have. Everything else has a wooden, utilitarian air about it and screams ‘educational’. Neve had played it safe and stuck to the present she was instructed to buy; a stacking game with colourful wooden balls which Lottie hasn’t looked at since opening.

Maisie starts to grizzle and Lou takes her off into another room. She still occasionally breastfeeds her and knows she will get a frosty reception from Celia, who once declared that there was ‘no need for letting everything hang out’. Neve, having seen what having two children has done to Lou’s breasts, guiltily half agrees with this sentiment.

As she washes up, Neve thinks back to the Christmas before. She and Daniel, who didn’t speak to his parents any more and was without familial ties, had holed up with wine, beer and a range of deli food from Marks and Spencer. They watched Breaking Bad in one long marathon, stopping only for sex and food breaks. There was no tree and they sent no cards.

It had been her best adult Christmas.

Her heart feels sand-bag heavy inside her chest as she remembers them emerging, blinking into the daylight for a walk on Boxing Day. They’d walked hand in hand on Hampstead Heath and stopped for hot chocolates in the funny old café that never seemed to change.

It’s hard to think about what they talked of now.

So much of their time together – almost four years – had revolved around going out, getting stoned, getting drunk. Laughter. Music. Sex.

Fun.

During his ‘up’ times anyway. There were other periods when Daniel turned his face to the wall for whole mornings or afternoons and was monosyllabic. She used to tell herself it was all part of his arty personality and that his up and down moods were somehow fuelled by creativity.

Daniel was a musician, who played in a couple of bands and also did the occasional bit of session work, mainly classical guitar. He was a few years older than Neve – thirty-six on his last birthday. When, shortly after, he had quit both the bands on the same weekend, she’d told him he was having an early mid-life crisis. Then he took off, to Ireland, to visit a friend, so he said.

And while he was away, she was so angry with him that she got drunk and slept with his friend and band mate Ash. When he came back it turned out he had been ‘trying to get his head together’ and had decided it was time they got married. Neve didn’t want to get married. But she didn’t want him to know about Ash either and she had ended up blurting that out within two hours of him getting home.

She’d moved out a few days later. There’s no prospect of being forgiven. Daniel was ‘betrayed’, as he put it, by his first love and had sunk into a deep depression after this. Now, he says Neve has opened up old wounds, and inflicted new ones.

She still doesn’t want to marry him. But she wishes they could slip back into their old life and just carry on as they were. Why did things have to change?

Taking a tray of teas and coffees into the living room, Neve sees that Lottie has built a teetering tower out of her building blocks and is concentrating with a scrunched brow and chewed lower lip on getting the final piece on top. Steve is helping and Celia is sitting close by and handing over marbles.

But as the final one is put into place, the whole thing collapses and scatters coloured glass in a surprisingly wide arc.

Lottie gives a frustrated squeal and says in a clear, bright voice, ‘Buggering cunty bollocks,’ just as Lou walks back into the room.

Celia sucks in her breath. Steve glares at Neve. Lou looks as though she is going to burst into tears.

‘Where on earth has she learned language like that?’ says Celia.

‘That’s what Aunty Neve said when she stubbed her toe on Daddy’s bike,’ says Lottie, eyes bright, picking up on the charged atmosphere. Neve forces a laugh and reaches for a cup of coffee. She takes a sip and scalds her mouth.

‘Oops!’ she says and glances around the room at the looks of disapproval and disappointment. ‘Sorry. I promise to rein it in.’

‘Yes, why don’t you?’ says Steve, furiously snatching up bricks. ‘Why don’t you just do that?’

Neve suddenly feels an overwhelming exhaustion wash over her. She would happily lay her head down on the carpet and sleep right now.

‘I said I’m sorry,’ she says in a small voice.

‘But are you?’ Steve’s face is rigid and Neve experiences a jolt at how much dislike she sees there.

‘Er. Yes, I am?’

‘Because,’ says Steve, ‘I don’t know.’ He gets to his feet. It is actually possible to see his internal temperature rising. ‘It seems to me as though you get a bit of a kick out of disrupting things.’

Injustice flashes bright inside her chest. ‘That’s not fair.’

Lou says, ‘Steve,’ warningly.

But Steve is only just starting. Lottie creeps towards her grandmother’s legs and leans against her, thumb in mouth and eyes wide.

‘No, Lou, you know that you feel the same way. You said it would be for a week or so and how long have you been here now, Neve?’

‘I’m not sure, maybe a month, but I’m trying—’

‘Six weeks,’ he cuts across her. ‘And not only do you leave a trail of destruction everywhere you go, you come in at all hours after doing God knows what. It’s like you think you live in a student squat, rather than a family house.’

‘Steve, please!’ snaps Lou. ‘It’s Christmas Day! This isn’t the time for that conversation.’

‘It never is the time!’ Steve’s roar shocks everyone, including, it seems, himself. He snaps his jaw shut and blinks furiously.

Neve gets up from the seat. She can feel it building inside her, and she knows she should just leave now. Say nothing else.

She also knows she won’t do that.

‘But you’re not so perfect, are you?’ she says, with a half-smile.

Steve laughs. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well,’ says Neve, ‘I’ve noticed that it’s always Lou who does the donkey work with the girls. You somehow manage to go out with your mates and do all your wanky sports, don’t you? While my sister looks like one of the walking dead most of the time.’

‘Neve!’

‘Sorry, but it’s true.’

‘If you care so much about your sister, you could help out a bit, couldn’t you?’ barks Steve.

‘Really,’ says Celia now, her face pink with outrage. ‘I must say that you are being very ungrateful after everything my son … and daughter-in-law have done for you.’

Neve can’t help it. It literally slips out of her mouth, as involuntary as a cough or a belch. ‘Oh you can fuck off, Celia.’

Celia’s mouth drops open and it occurs to Neve she has never seen this happen quite so cartoonishly before.

‘How dare you speak to my wife that way!’ bellows Bill.

‘STOP IT!’ Lou bursts into tears and the sound sets off Maisie from her bedroom. Lou is almost panting, her fists clenched at the sides of her head. She looks just like Lottie for a moment.

Neve feels her anger dull and makes a move to touch her sister’s arm, alarmed. But Lou shakes her hand away as if it burns.

‘Just stop it, all of you.’ She looks at Neve, her eyes gleaming. Her expression is one of genuine puzzlement when she says, ‘Why do you have to spoil everything?’

8

Monday 12th March 1996

Dearest Granny,

Can I just say that everyone is really overreacting?

Look, I’ve always been funny about blood – you know that. Remember when Rich broke his nose playing rugby? And I fainted and gave myself concussion? Then there was the time Mummy cut her finger when I was little and I got all hysterical.

It’s what I do. Funny old Izzy, etc! Big drama queen. As Dad always says.

And this time there were what you call them – extenerating (???) circumstances. I hadn’t eaten my lunch and was about to come on, so I was a bit wobbly.

The stupid thing about it is that the paint didn’t even look that realistic, not really.

We were in art and because it was almost Halloween, people were telling silly stories and trying to scare each other. And Sasha Picket, who always has to be at the centre of EVERYTHING, thought it would be really funny to cover her hands and arms in red paint.

She let out this horrible shriek and when we looked at her, her eyes were all wide and mad.

Everyone says that almost straight away she went, ‘Out, out damned Spot!’ and then cracked up. But I don’t really remember any of that.

All I know is that everything went tight and hot and there was no air. I wanted to make myself really small. I don’t remember screaming like they all said I did. I think they’re exaggerating about that part.

But anyway of course there was a big hoohah about it and all the teachers went nuts.

I am FINE.

F.I.N.E.

Okay? Promise!

So you can stop worrying about me. I hate school, but there’s nothing new there.

Can’t wait to see you and to give you and Bruce the biggest cuddles. Tell him I’m taking him for walkies SOON! Hope he’s being a good boy.

All my love,

Izzy xxxxx

I miss Mummy so much. She never went off the deep end like Dad does. I know you miss her too xxxx

9

January crawls along with skies the colour of cement and unseasonable temperatures. Sad little patches of bright daffodils break out in the parks and are largely ignored, like early party-goers. No one feels they have earned these signs of spring yet.

It all adds to a sense in Neve that everything is off kilter. She has been thinking about the woman, Isabelle, a lot. One night she even found herself contemplating calling the Samaritans. Not because she is depressed – she knows that a general feeling of my-life-is-shit-right-now is on a different continent to real mental illness – but because she thought maybe someone could explain to her what kind of thoughts were going through Isabelle’s head that night.

She keeps trying to step inside that moment again, when Isabelle spoke into her ear with that harsh whisper. Could she, Neve, have grabbed hold of her and stopped her doing what she did?

Could she have been kinder when she saw her there?

Every time she thinks about how irritated she had been at the hold-up to her journey home, she feels a nauseous lurch of guilt in her stomach. If only she had a bit more information. She forgot the woman’s surname as soon as the police had revealed it. Why didn’t she make a note of it somewhere? And how could she have forgotten? This feels like a terrible thing.

They have reached an uneasy truce at the flat. She has apologized, and so has Steve, but they both know their only regret is having upset Lou.

Lottie and Lou and the baby have all been felled by a vicious cold. Neve has the constitution of an ox but can feel a general sniffly misery pulling at her senses and knows it’s only a matter of time before she gets sick too.

At least she might get a day off work.

Miri is on maternity leave now and Neve is keenly aware of the space she has left behind. Two of her closest friends have moved away from London in the last year, both because they have married and started reproducing. There are invitations to go to Wales and to Sussex, or wherever it was, to visit, but she feels curiously dispirited by the prospect of admiring their wood burners and their big gardens and hearing all about how they ‘should have done this years ago’.

This particular morning has crept by with soupy slowness. There is an uneasy feeling at PCC because of a rumour that a German magazine company based in Beckenham are interested in buying the company and merging it with one that specializes in magazine part-works.

Neve has finished up all the jobs she has been asked to do this morning and now sits staring down at Facebook on her phone and giving desultory swipes at various posts.

She remembers that she had stuffed some letters into her bag this morning before leaving for work. A small pile was building up on the table and she knew Steve was going to start getting all twitchy about it soon, so she had resolved to take it to work to read and dump, depending on what it was.

Flicking through now she finds a couple of bills, an interesting-looking letter in a white envelope, which turns out to be from an estate agent of all things, and finally she opens an A3 brown envelope, knowing it is bound to be something to do with tax, or National Insurance, or some other unpleasantness.

But inside, she is surprised to see first a compliment slip with ‘Met Police’ printed at the top and a couple of sentences scrawled in blue Biro beneath.

Ms Carey, we were asked to pass on this information. Kind regards.

There is no signature.

Neve flicks the switchboard over to automatic and feels her heartbeat kick faster as she unclips the compliment slip and looks at the letter beneath.

The paper is thick and creamy; official-looking. The letterhead says ‘Beswick, Robinson, Carter, Meade, Solicitors and Commissioners of Oaths’.

The address is in Salisbury.

Neve quickly unfolds the letter, ignoring the lights that have started to flash insistently on the switchboard.

Dear Ms Carey

We have been instructed to act on behalf of trustees of the will of Miss Isabelle Shawcross, who died on 21st December 2016.

We would be very grateful if you could ring the office and arrange a time to come in at your convenience to discuss a matter that relates to these instructions.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

L. Meade (Solicitor)

At first, all she feels is relief. Seeing the police logo, and then the solicitor’s header, she’d had a terrible feeling of having been found guilty of some crime she doesn’t remember committing. She stole a traffic cone, drunkenly, a couple of years ago and for a strange moment had been sure they were finally coming for her.

The switchboard is lit up like the flight deck of a 747 now so she forces herself to pick up the phone and start routing calls where they need to go. She isn’t concentrating and one caller comes back to switchboard, annoyed at being sent to the IT office, rather than the post room as they had requested.

All the while her mind buzzes with questions.

How did the solicitor’s firm get her name? The police, presumably. That was easy enough to answer. But why on earth did this solicitor want to see her?

It couldn’t be that she has been left something in her will, because they only met just before she died. Neve doesn’t know much about it, but she knows wills have to be signed and witnessed well in advance of someone’s death.

So what else can it be?

Realization dawns and she actually says, ‘Oh,’ out loud.

Of course. The family want to speak to her, as the last person to be with Isabelle. To thank her? Or to have a go at her? Why didn’t she stop her from jumping and so on. As if she hasn’t tortured herself with that thought enough.

Neve shudders and scrunches the letter up before throwing it neatly into her recycling bin.

She doesn’t tell anyone about it over the next week. Miri never seems to be around and she knows exactly what Lou would say. She’d go on about ‘the right thing to do’ and guilt trip Neve like she always does. So she leaves it, not expecting to hear anything further.

But a week later, another letter arrives in the post.

Dear Ms Carey

Further to my letter of 15th January regarding the estate of the late Miss Isabelle Shawcross, we would be extremely grateful if you could call the office. We urgently need to discuss a matter that relates to these instructions.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

L. Meade (Solicitor)

This time the person who has signed the police slip has written, We would be grateful if you could attend to this. We cannot pass on personal information under The Freedom of Information Act 2000 but this is no longer a police matter and we have limited resources in terms of fielding enquiries. Thank you for your consideration.

Neve is in the hallway, having arrived home from work as she opens this one.

Sighing, she takes her phone into the study to make the call.

Two days later, she is on a train to Salisbury.

The solicitor wouldn’t explain over the phone. But she insisted it was in Neve’s interests to come to the office to discuss this in person. ‘In your interests’. Those were the exact words. It’s all very mysterious.

Neve drains the last of the coffee she bought at Waterloo and looks out of the window as the tightly packed buildings of south London change to Surrey commuter towns and then green fields.

She has a book, something Lou has foisted upon her, which looks a bit worthy, and a copy of Grazia, which she can’t be bothered to read either. Squeezing her earbuds into her ears, she plays Tom Odell on her phone and tries to settle into the journey.

Neve would have liked to have done this the above-board way.

But there was simply no chance that she would have been allowed a day off so soon after the Christmas holidays. So at seven a.m. she had sent her direct boss, office manager Kate, a short text saying, So sorry. Food poisoning from a curry! Bleurgh! Been up all night. Better stay close to a toilet today!

Which, thinking about it, might have sounded a bit desperate. Daniel, who was a maestro at telling lies like this, always said she needed to keep it simple. But being naturally honest, she always felt the need to embellish.

The bad night’s sleep part was true anyway. She’d been lying in bed worrying about money the night before. Neve managed not to think about money too much, as a rule. It was a necessary evil, and that was all. She had no real desire to be rich, but she wasn’t someone prepared to rough it either. She and Daniel had spent a few nights in a squat when they were first together and she vividly remembered how miserable it had been, lying in a smelly room and feeling colder than she had ever been in her life.

But yesterday she’d had another automated text from the bank, reminding her she had reached her overdraft limit and now being charged £1 a day for further withdrawals. The ticket to Salisbury was paid for on her credit card, but that was coming close to being maxed out.

And the worst thing was, she couldn’t tell Lou how broke she really was.

When their father had died, eighteen months ago, the sisters had inherited a small amount of money each – £15,000. It would have been more, but for him having been persuaded into taking out a bad mortgage arrangement on his property.

Lou had put her share into a university account for the children. Neve had had every intention of saving at least some of it, but she had two big credit card bills to pay off at the time.

And then she and Daniel had really needed a holiday. They’d gone off to Spain for the Benicàssim music festival and had a brilliant time. Well, what she could remember of it, anyway. Parts of it were still a bit of a blur.

But somehow, within five months, her bank statement was showing her the impossible information that she had just £500 left in her savings account. Neve feels so ashamed at how she has ripped through her inheritance that she has been clinging onto this £500, determined not to spend it unless it is something that her dad would have thought appropriate, which most definitely ruled out credit card bills. When she and Daniel were together, they somehow muddled through. Now it looks as though she is going to have to dip into this small pot of money after all.

Neve had gone from her A levels to a job as a live-in au pair in London, working for a rich American couple with a pre-teen daughter. She had only to ferry the girl, Tabitha, to various activities and clubs and do a minimal amount of housework. Everyone told her she’d lucked out and she knew it was true. Then she met Daniel and when the Schwarzes located back to Colorado, she moved in with him.

She’s never really had to look after herself before, or live alone.

And she is on borrowed time with Lou and Steve.

When they were children, Lou used to harbour small resentments about the division of the parental affection. Neve was always the one having accidents or requiring medical attention when they were little: contracting a serious stomach virus that required hospitalization at two, falling out of a tree and breaking an arm at five, smashing a tooth after tripping over a paving slab at eight. Their parents used to joke that they would settle down for a family picnic somewhere and within moments Neve would have been stung by a bee, or fallen in the stream. Somehow this used to be seen as endearing when she was younger.

She wasn’t confident this was how Lou saw it even then.

These thoughts are still swirling corrosively in her mind as the famous spire of Salisbury cathedral finally comes into view. It is a crisp blue day and as she steps out of the station and begins to follow the directions from Google maps on her phone, she starts to feel more positive.

Soon she finds herself in the big market square, packed with stalls selling fruit and vegetables, children’s clothes or mobile phone accessories. A jumble of pointed roofed buildings line the top of the square. Neve checks the address once again on the letter. Heading across the square, she finds herself outside a modern-looking shopfront with tinted glass and a sign bearing the name ‘Beswick, Robinson, Carter, Meade’. A man in overalls is currently washing the large windows and he moves to one side with a grin as she heads towards the door.

Pushing it open, she looks around a small reception area. A middle-aged receptionist with blonde coiffed hair and bright pink lipstick sits at a curved reception desk.

Neve says, ‘Hi, I have an appointment with …’ but the receptionist holds up a finger imperiously and lifts the receiver to her ear. She smiles brightly at Neve as she speaks to the caller.

‘Beswick-Robinson-Carter-Meade-solicitors-how-may-I-direct-your-call-today?’ she says all in one breath, still beaming at Neve, who shifts on the spot.

Finally, she has the woman’s attention and a few moments later is directed to wait in one of the chairs for visitors.

The square leather chairs are very low to the ground and Neve settles her five-feet-nine-and-a-half frame into it awkwardly, knees to the side. The glass coffee table is covered with copies of The Lady and Country Life. She pretends to study her phone while she waits.

After a few moments she hears her name and looks up to see a woman about her own age smiling coolly down at her.

Her glossy red hair is twisted in a neat knot on top of her head and she wears a white silk top and a tight black skirt with high heels. Neve feels a stab of something uncomfortable. She always feels wrong-footed by uber-professional people like this. Really, she’d been hoping the solicitor was some middle-aged twinset and pearls type. She wouldn’t feel any need for comparison then, she thinks, placing her hand over a mark on the knee of her trousers she’s just spotted.

‘Miss Carey?’

‘Yes.’ Neve gets up with difficulty from the low chair and shakes her proffered hand. She always finds this ritual odd when between women. The other hand is small and cold and perfectly dry. Her own feels sweaty and ham-like in comparison.

‘I’m Laura Meade, would you like to—’

Before she can finish her sentence they are all distracted by the door to the street opening with almost violent force.

A tall bear of a man with curly dark hair bursts in and looks as if he has forgotten why he’s here. Bright blue eyes peer out of a chubby, unshaven face. He’s wearing some sort of brown corduroy jacket, baggy trousers of an indeterminate colour and wellies that are thickly rimed with claggy brown mud.

A black Labrador bounds in after him, heading for Neve and burying its face in her crotch.

‘Oh!’ she laughs and fusses with its ears in an attempt to distract it.

‘Jarvis!’ the man barks. The dog, ignoring him, leans its considerable weight against Neve’s legs, almost pushing her over. She grins but when she glances up, sees that Laura Meade is bright red. She keeps looking between Neve and the man, and the receptionist, one after the other. Then she seems to gather herself.

‘Richard,’ she says coolly to the man. ‘Didn’t we cover everything earlier?’

‘Don’t suppose I left my bloody phone in here?’ Richard’s voice is rich and fruity, like an old Shakespearean actor’s.

Laura looks at the receptionist, who is taking all this in with bright-eyed avidity. She shakes her head.

‘I’m afraid not,’ says Laura.

‘Bugger. Better try the bank then,’ he says with feeling. And then he’s gone.

Neve sees a look pass between Laura and the woman on reception, whose eyebrows are almost at her hairline, and wonders what she isn’t getting about this whole scenario.

‘Apologies for that,’ says Laura now, gesturing towards some double doors behind the reception desk. ‘Do come through.’

Neve follows the solicitor into her office, and the door is shut.

10

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ says Neve five minutes later. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to swear. Sorry.’

She picks up the glass of water she was offered on arrival into the office and puts it down again, sloshing a little onto her trousers as she does so.

Laura Meade regards her with an expression she can’t quite read.

‘I assure you, I’m not,’ she says. ‘Look, I appreciate this is a shock. It is why I wanted you to be here in person. I thought this had to be a face-to-face conversation, rather than being discussed by letter or over the phone.’

‘But how?’ Neve blurts out, her voice too loud. ‘I mean, how can she have given me a fucking cottage? Sorry. But how? She didn’t even know me.’

Laura nods patiently.

‘It’s a special type of bequest,’ she says, ‘that can be made separately from a will. It applies when someone dies intestate, like Isabelle did, and is known as donatio mortis causa.’ She pauses. ‘Basically, it’s a deathbed gift.’

Their eyes meet and both look away at this uncomfortable term then Laura continues crisply. ‘There are a few basic requirements for this to be legally binding,’ she says, ‘and they have all been met, however unusual the circumstances may be.’

‘But why me?’ says Neve after a moment.

Laura sighs. ‘We can only guess that she wanted to make this bequest to the last person she saw before she took her life.’

Neve thought of the envelope, clutched in Isabelle’s thin, white hand.

She never even saw it fall to the ground when she’d dropped it a couple of minutes later. The shock of the other woman climbing up and throwing herself into the cold, dark water had thrown it violently from her mind. ‘What exactly was in the envelope?’ she says.

Laura lifts a coffee cup to her lips and takes a sip before placing it carefully back on its coaster.

‘It contained the deeds to the cottage, plus a written note. You may remember she also recorded a message into her phone, confirming your name, just before …’ she clears her throat ‘… just before she did it.’

‘God,’ says Neve quietly. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ After a moment, she adds, ‘Did you know her?’

Laura seems to lose her professional veneer for a moment and makes an anguished face.

‘We were at school together, years ago, but we weren’t really good friends. She was …’ she pauses. ‘She ran with a bit of a different crowd. I hadn’t heard from her in years. Then … well, then we received this.’

Neve chews her lip.

‘I can’t take it, anyway,’ she says.

‘Why not?’ Laura slightly tips her head to the side.

‘Because!’ Neve lets out a humourless, stressed laugh. ‘Because it’s not right. And what do her family say? Don’t they mind?’

Laura looks down at her skirt and brushes something off before looking up at Neve again. The shutters are back down now.

‘She only has a brother,’ she says. ‘And …’ she pauses. ‘I have no idea whether he wanted it or not.’

Neve shakes her head in wonder.

‘I just can’t understand why someone would do this though, with a complete stranger. I mean, why not leave it to, I don’t know, Barnardo’s, or Battersea Dogs Home or something? Why a random person on a bridge?’

Laura sits back in her seat with a sigh.

‘We can’t possibly know what was going through her head now,’ she says, wearily. ‘But she clearly had a desire not to be alone when she killed herself. Maybe she just wanted to say thank you, retrospectively.’

‘Well, it’s the saddest bloody thing I’ve ever heard.’ Neve’s eyes fill with hot tears and she swipes them away, furiously. ‘I wasn’t even that nice to her,’ she says. ‘I was impatient to get home. All I did was say I’d stand her a night bus and ask where her coat was.’

‘Well,’ says Laura, her gaze fixed on Neve’s face. ‘All we can assume is that this is more kindness than she would have had otherwise. Maybe it was enough.’

There’s a pause. Neve swallows and finds a tissue in her handbag, which she uses to blow her nose, more loudly than she intended.

Laura pushes an A4 padded envelope across the table towards her.

‘This really is happening quite legally, Neve,’ she says in a gentle voice. ‘You own Petty Whin Cottage and everything in it. It’s all yours now.’

11

Neve walks robotically back to the station afterwards, all thoughts of having a wander around Salisbury and finding somewhere cheap for lunch forgotten. She has a strong desire to get straight on a train and try and make sense of what has just happened.

She’s lucky with trains and is able to run for the Waterloo-bound one that is just leaving.

Finding a table to herself, she begins to investigate the contents of the envelope. There’s a bundle of papers, including the details of a lease. At the bottom of the envelope there is a small keyring in the shape of a dog, with a grubby suede covering that is worn away in patches, revealing carved wood underneath. It looks ancient, thinks Neve, spreading out the lease document and studying the address.

Petty Whin Cottage

Briarfield

Stubbington Lane

Cador

Near St Piron

Cornwall

Neve reaches for her phone and taps the Google app, before typing the name of the cottage into the search box. There are no entries for the property, but she learns that the odd name comes from a yellow flowering plant native to the area.

Cornwall.

She’s never been there. She’d wanted to ask Laura Meade if the cottage was by the sea, but it didn’t seem right. It might have sounded as though she actually wanted it. But the very word makes her picture blue skies, roses climbing up the front of a whitewashed cottage. Healthy sea air. Her heart rises a little, despite herself.

There isn’t anything much online for Cador, except, worryingly, a headline from the Cornish Times about a drugs bust. Neve assumes it is too tiny for mention, but St Piron seems to be a small town that’s a few miles from Truro.

Next she Googles the name ‘Isabelle Shawcross’ and after a couple of unhelpful entries about an American law professor she sees a news story from a site called West Cornish Life.

Christmas Suicide of Local Woman

A woman has died after apparently jumping into the Thames on 21st December. Isabelle Shawcross, who grew up in the St Piron area of the county, was 34 years old and left no husband or children. It is believed she had been living in Australia for some time before returning to the UK. The police say they are not treating the death as suspicious, but the coroner has yet to fix a date for the inquest. Her brother, local landowner Richard Shawcross, was unavailable for comment.

Searching further, she finds only a black American woman called Isabel Shawcross on Facebook and nothing else.

Bizarre. Isabelle seems to have been someone with almost no internet presence.

Neve finds herself tapping the words ‘cottages for sale, Cornwall’ into Google.

On the Rightmove site a list appears and she begins to scroll through it, quickly finding an astonishing difference in the range of house prices here, from a run-down two-bedroom cottage at £75,000 right up to places going for several million.

But right now, £75,000 sounds like a miraculous, almost magical amount of money. All of a sudden, Isabelle’s last words appear in her head … ‘And keep it, if you can bear to,’ and the back of her neck prickles.

When the train pulls into Waterloo station, Neve drains the last of the warm gin and tonic, her second on the train, and begins to gather her things.

Over the course of the journey, she has made a series of plans:

1. Sell the cottage immediately. Pay off debts. Get own flat.

2. Say NO to cottage. How can I possibly accept???Find a way of contacting Isabelle’s surviving relative. Hand over cottage.

3. Sell it. Sell. SELL.

Walking across the concourse at Waterloo towards the tube station, at first Neve ignores the man pointedly staring at her, taking him to be a creep. But when she hears her name she looks at him properly and feels her stomach plummet.

It’s Fraser from work, gazing at her with a triumphant expression.

‘Well,’ he says, as commuters stream past them in both directions. ‘Looks like you have made a full recovery.’

‘Does, doesn’t it?’ says Neve. She has to stifle a yawn that rises from nowhere. She’s suddenly very, very tired.

‘I think we’d better have a word tomorrow, don’t you? A little chat about responsibility?’

He’s so pleased with himself that his face has turned the colour of ham. Neve sighs.

‘Bugger off, Fraser,’ she says, just as another man comes to stand right next to him, his expression one of injured puzzlement.

Without waiting to hear a reply, Neve turns away and hurries to the tube.

She can’t face going home.

Everything is buzzing inside her now. The tiredness has turned into a wired energy. She needs to go out, to do something. To find a way to make sense of the mad day she has had.

On the Northern Line, she makes the snap decision to get off at Camden station. She’ll go to the pub where she and Daniel used to hang out. There’s bound to be someone there who wants to have some fun. There might be a live band. Maybe Daniel will even come along. She can pretend it’s just like old times.

It turns out that most of her old crowd are there. By ten o’clock she’s standing outside, smoking a joint with her back against the wall and laughing so hard she almost starts to pee.

She’s with a drummer called Bick, a friend of a couple of years. No one knows where Bick comes from, exactly. He has a strange accent that is part American and part Scandinavian. He is six foot five and his shaved head gleams like polished ebony. Tribal scars nubble his cheekbones and rows of earrings stud his upper lobes. His sexuality is what he refers to as ‘fluid’. He’s the most beautiful man Neve knows.

She has told everyone about the cottage over the course of the evening.

Most agree that she must sell up straight away. A tiny, birdlike girl called Darcy, an ardent clubber, is of the opinion that Neve should go and live there. There was some talk of jam-making and a mass visit from them all at a date in the summer. Also possibly a music festival in the ‘grounds’. Everyone, including Neve, is hazy on the specifics but it sounds like the best idea for a while.

Bick is talking now and Neve smiles soppily up at him.

‘I think I love you, Bick,’ she slurs and puts her hands on his chest, raising her mouth to kiss him. But Bick steps back, laughing.

‘Neve, honey, I absolutely would, don’t get me wrong. But you’ve had a very weird day and I think you need to go home.’

Deflated, Neve stands back and almost falls off the kerb.

‘I’vegotafuckingcottage,’ she says as one word.

‘I know you have, darling. I know you have.’

A few minutes later he folds her into a taxi with assurances to the sceptical driver that she isn’t going to be sick. Neve manages to pass on Lou and Steve’s address. But when they reach the junction of Camden Road and Kentish Town Road, Neve leans over and gives new instructions, filled with a sudden second wind.

The driver eyes her warily, then changes direction.

A few minutes later, the car pulls up outside Daniel’s flat. The flat that was once hers and Daniel’s.

She pays the driver with the money Bick had insisted she take and stands on the pavement, staring woozily up at the top floor. A fox appears from the alleyway next to the house and regards her brazenly before slinking away. There’s a car alarm going off on the next road along.

Swaying slightly on her feet, she wishes fervently now that she hadn’t thrown the keys back at him during a fight. All she wants is to creep in and go to bed. She wouldn’t even bother him; she’d only sleep on the sofa. It seems so reasonable that she could do this. Who could possibly object to her sleeping on their sofa?

But there is no option other than to wake him up, now she’s here.

She wobbles up the steps and peers at the row of buzzers. Funny how unfamiliar it looks in such a short time. Focusing hard on not missing the target, she presses her finger squarely onto the buzzer and keeps it there. Then she removes it and does it again.

‘Hello?’ Daniel’s sleepy voice crackles from the intercom. She feels a happy rush that he is so near and she will see him within mere moments.

‘S’me!’ she says.

‘Who?’

Neve pauses, frowning.

‘S’Neve,’ she says a bit less cheerfully.

There’s a silence.

‘What do you want?’

Neve sways and tries to concentrate on what’s happening. This isn’t working out as she had expected.

‘To go to sleep,’ she says honestly and pushes the door, confident that it will have been released.

Nothing happens so she buzzes again and, a few seconds later, it opens and reveals a stony-faced Daniel.

He’s wearing an old T-shirt she has always loved, which says Revolution is Just a T-Shirt Away in white letters on black, faded to soft grey now, and pyjama bottoms. His hair is tousled and hangs over his eyes and he’s grown a small beard since she saw him last. He’s never looked more attractive and desire floods her entire body, hot and quick.

‘Neve? What the fuck?’ he says as she moves quickly and snakes her arms around his back. She breathes in the familiar smell of him and feels her groin squeeze in anticipation.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she says and starts to nibble and kiss his neck. ‘Let’s just forget about all of it. I have a cottage now.’

‘What?’ Daniel tries to step back. ‘What the hell are you talking about? And get off me, Neve, you’re completely wrecked.’

Neve slides her hands around his waist and over his firm buttocks, looking at him impishly through her lashes. She can feel the beginnings of a hard-on against her stomach as she pulls him closer and he makes a small sound in his throat. She’s not sure whether it’s a sound of being turned on, or a disgusted ‘tut’.

‘Not too wrecked,’ she says in a low voice. ‘We were always good together like this, weren’t we? Remember, I know what you like.’ She tries to peel his pyjama bottoms down and is suddenly thrust backwards so hard she almost falls down the steps.

‘Stop it!’ yells Daniel. ‘Just fucking stop this!’

‘Danny? What’s happening?’

A sleepy high-pitched voice seeps from the staircase and Neve stares over his shoulder to see a girl she recognizes from the pub, standing behind Daniel. She’s wearing one of his T-shirts and coils of blonde hair spill over her shoulders. Yawning like a cat, she then blinks hard at Neve.

‘What’s going on?’ she says, awake now. ‘What’s going on, Danny?’

‘Danny! No one calls him Danny! Who the fuck are you to be standing there like that and calling him fucking Danny?’

And with that she bursts into violent sobs.

Danny regards her with a look that makes her actually clench her toes inside her shoes.

‘Just go home, Neve,’ he says. ‘You’re only embarrassing yourself. You need to accept things and move on, alright?’

12

Neve remembers several things as her alarm clock, which by some miracle she managed to set last night, goes off with the intensity of a road drill next to her.

1. She was given a cottage yesterday.

2. She went to Daniel’s and humiliated herself.

3. When she got back to Lou’s she threw up in the bathroom.

4. Then she cleaned it up.

She definitely cleaned it up. Didn’t she?

Scrambling out of bed, she smashes her knee into the frame in her haste, and swears. She pulls on a hoodie with shaking hands and, thrusting open the study door, heads down the landing to the bathroom.

Lou is just emerging through the door. She is wearing rubber gloves and holds a bucket filled with cleaning products.

‘Lou, I’m so sorry, I swear I meant to sort that out.’

Lou regards her younger sister. She doesn’t look angry. She looks exhausted. Her nostrils are inflamed and red, her skin porridge-coloured.

‘You didn’t do a very good job,’ she says in a flat monotone. ‘Luckily I went in there first. Steve’s having a lie-in.’

‘Lou, I really am—’

Maisie begins to wail.

‘Forget it,’ says Lou and her voice is sharp now. ‘Just forget it, Neve.’ A surge of shamed affection for her sister washes over her and she goes to touch her arm but Lou pushes past and goes down the stairs.

It takes two paracetamols, a double strength ibuprofen and a triple espresso to give Neve the physical means to be able to walk into the office just before nine. The pounding in her head is more muted now, but her stomach occasionally shivers with nausea and her hands are shaky.

She vows to belatedly sign up to whatever the Dry January thing is on Facebook later. Dry half-of-January has to be better than not doing it at all.

The morning creaks by a second at a time and she tries to bury herself in admin jobs that have built up since the start of the week.

Mid-morning, Fraser and a couple of the other editors sweep into the office, and the sleepy energy instantly changes. This is partly because they are all wearing suits; even Fraser looks quite dapper in a dark blue pinstripe, despite the cut being a good fifteen years out of fashion.

Neve weakly turns on her smile of greeting, which slips when she sees the mean shine in Fraser’s eyes and notices the man he is showing into reception. Small and bespectacled with close-cropped grey hair, it’s his companion from Waterloo yesterday.

‘Miss Carey,’ says Fraser brightly. He has never called her this before. He somehow manages to make it less respectful than if he had used her Christian name. ‘Can you please organize for some coffee in the conference room?’

‘Yes, sure,’ she says, even though she isn’t supposed to leave reception. The party of five men sweep past her and she notices the stranger frown at her, in obvious recognition from the day before. Her heart gives an anxious jolt and she feels clammy sweat beading her hairline. She grabs the bottle of Diet Coke on her desk and takes a long swig.

One of the picture editors, a shy young woman called Edie who wears 1940s-style clothes, comes into reception then. She stares at the retreating backs of the men, chewing her red-lipsticked bottom lip; brow creased.

‘Edie,’ hisses Neve. ‘What’s going on?’

Edie comes over in her neat little dress covered in sprigs of cherries, thick tights and 1940s sandals. Her blonde hair is twisted into victory rolls at the side of her head. She fixes large pale eyes on Neve and makes a face of dismay.

‘That’s Holger Meier,’ she says in a low voice. ‘He’s one of the directors from Brahmen Klein.’

‘Shit …’

Brahmen Klein is a huge European media company. She’s been too preoccupied to think much about the rumours in the office. Now all she can do is remember the shocked expression on the face of this man, who has power over her future, as she told Fraser to ‘bugger off’.

‘Oh God,’ she says. Edie sighs.

‘Yeah. I’d better get back to updating my CV,’ she says. ‘I suggest you do the same.’

Neve doesn’t make the coffee.

Instead, she thinks about the moment Isabelle Shawcross whispered hot breath into her ear; breath that was on a countdown to being her last. She thinks about the fact that she is going to lose her job; if not today, then soon.

She thinks about last night, and Christmas, and the reception she is going to get from Lou and Steve when she gets back.

She understands that Daniel is now part of her past and will never be in her future again.

The switchboard begins to light up in front of her and she watches it as though from behind a sheet of glass. Then she picks up her coat and handbag, and leaves the building for ever.

Lou is out with the girls at one of their classes when she gets home. She is struggling under the awkward weight of a bunch of flowers that cost more than £40, bought after transferring the last of her dad’s money into her current account. They’re a mix of gerbera in bright purples and yellows. She knows that Lou loves gerbera.

She carefully arranges them in a vase on the kitchen table, making sure she wipes up the spills of water she leaves in the process, then hunts for paper and a pen. All she can find is a drawing pad of Lottie’s, covered in stick people and attempts at cats in crayon, and a felt tip pen. Finding a sheet that leaks colour through from the drawings on the other side, she rips it out and begins to write a note.

Lou and Steve. I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done for me. I’m really sorry I’ve been such a nightmare. I do love you, whatever you might think. xxN

Then she takes the duvet cover, sheets and pillowcases she’d taken from the sofa bed that morning and tips them into the linen basket. Getting the vacuum cleaner out of the hall cupboard, she gives the room a thorough clean.

She can’t take everything but she’ll think about that later. This is only for a few days, to get her head together. She manages to stuff a surprising amount into a small wheelie case and a rucksack, which she hoists onto her back, wobbling under the awkward weight.

A few minutes later, she leaves the flat, closing the door with a quiet click behind her.

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