FAR CRY

The envelope is where she left it, buried beneath receipts for old electricity bills, scribbled notes from the woman who comes Tuesdays and Thursdays to clean and which she has never yet discarded, recipes torn from this or that magazine: an off-white envelope, self-sealing, buckling a little at the corners. Inside is an ordinary postcard showing a map of south-west Cornwall coloured largely green; on the reverse side her name, hers and her ex-husband’s, Simon’s, are written above the address in a careful, painstaking hand. Mr and Mrs Pierce. The old address in London, NW5. The message alongside slanting slightly, left to right.

Midway between Cape Cornwall and Sennen Cove, close to a zigzag of coast, a small dot has been made with a ballpoint pen, and when Ruth holds it up, as she does now, towards the kitchen window, the afternoon already beginning to fade, she can see a faint pinprick of light through the hole the pen has deliberately made. This is where I am, written in small letters that curve out across the ocean. This is where I am: an arrow pointing to the spot.

It’s not certain how long she stands there, staring out, staring down, the card in her hand. Then, with a small catch of her breath, she slips the card back into the envelope, the envelope back into the drawer, and, glancing at the clock, turns quickly away. Time to change into her shoes, pull on her coat, collect her daughter from school; her other daughter, Beatrice, the one who is still alive.

Alongside him, Lorraine stirred and for a moment he turned back towards her warmth, her hand reaching sleepily for his as he kissed the smooth skin of her shoulder then rolled away.

Downstairs, he pulled on his running gear and laced up his shoes, Susie’s first cry reaching him as he slipped the bolt on the door and stepped outside. A few stretching exercises and he set off along the narrow road towards the end of the village, the path that would take him between the fields towards the fen.

Though there were times when he would deny it, disclaim responsibility, it was Will whose decision had finally brought them here, this small, strung-out village in the sparsely populated north of the county, where everything beneath the widening sky seemed to be water, sometimes even the land.

Lorraine, it was true, had been prodding them, even before Jake, their first child, had been born: wanting them to move out of the city, away from the small terraced house with its pinch-sized garden and damp walls. Somewhere in the country where they could find more space and room, fresh air, somewhere healthy for the kids – she had always talked of two, at least – to grow. And Will had half-agreed but had hung back, uncertain, valuing the push and flurry of Cambridge proper, the proximity of friends, and dreading the long commute into work, the backed-up lines of barely moving traffic. Maybe they should stick fast, stay where they were, extend upwards if she liked, a loft conversion, plenty enough of those. But then, driving east from Ely, having looked at something in the town – no bigger than where they already were and close to twice the price – they had been attracted by a For Sale sign pointing away from the main road, not an estate agent’s board, but one the owner had put up himself; a builder with an eye for design who had bought the land two years before and built this place – simple, clean lines, pale wood and glass – as a dream house for his wife. His dream, as it had turned out, not hers.

Will liked the wooden porch that ran the length of the building at the rear, the comfortable feel of the rooms, the high, broad windows with views out towards Ely cathedral and the slow-setting sun.

‘So what do you think?’ he’d asked Lorraine, and read the answer happily in her eyes.

Once the novelty had worn off they were certain they had made a mistake. The drive to the police station where Will was based, close to Cambridge city centre on Parkside, took even longer some days – most days – than he had reckoned and in the long hours that he was away, Lorraine, marooned with only a barely crawling child for company, felt as if she were going slowly out of her mind. Sometimes not so slowly at all.

‘Okay,’ Will said. ‘Sell up. Cut our losses. Find somewhere else.’

They stayed. Gradually, almost grudgingly, Lorraine found other women in the village, other mothers, with whom she had common cause; Will’s move, as detective inspector, into the Major Investigation Team was confirmed, taking DS Helen Walker with him as his number two, a working relationship that had sparked and flourished now for close on five years. How much longer Will could hang on to her before she was heading a squad of her own, he wasn’t sure.

Something had been itching at Helen lately, he’d noticed, making both tongue and temper sharper than ever, and maybe that’s what it was. A lack of recognition: too long spent trailing in his wake.

Will poured himself a second cup of coffee and spread marmalade on his last piece of toast; Lorraine was upstairs putting the finishing touches to her face. Three days a week she worked in the admissions office at King’s College and on those days she dropped Susie off with the registered childminder, before taking Jake to the local primary from where the minder would collect him at the end of the day.

Will swallowed down the remainder of his coffee, rinsed the mug at the sink, then stooped to give Jake a quick hug and kissed the top of his head. ‘Have a good day at school, okay? Work hard.’

‘Okay.’

Susie put her arms out towards him and he managed to kiss her cheek without getting cereal from her sticky fingers all over his shirt.

‘Dad?’ Jake’s voice stopped Will at the door. ‘This evening, when you get home, can we play football?’

‘Sure.’

Leaving the kitchen and living room curtains open would give them all the floodlighting they would need. Jake would be Manchester United, varying between Rooney and Ronaldo, while Will was doomed to be Cambridge United. A lopsided contest at best.

When Will stepped out into the lobby, Lorraine was almost at the bottom of the stairs.

‘You off?’ she said.

‘Better be.’

‘Home late?’

‘No more than usual.’

She slid inside his arms and when he bent his head towards her she kissed him lightly on the lips and stepped away. ‘Later, okay?’

Will laughed. ‘On a promise then, am I?’

‘You wish!’

Still laughing, he pulled his topcoat from the rack and headed out the door.

In the past few years she had tried patches, hypnosis, Nicorettes, even acupuncture, but the longest she had been able to abstain had been three months: one more particularly grisly case, one more set of early mornings and late, late nights and she had tumbled off the wagon and back on the nicotine.

She straightened as Will approached, squinting slightly against the light, surprisingly bright for so early in the day, so early in the year – Helen, wearing black trousers over red ankle boots, a grey sweater under a blue wool coat, her newly lightened hair pulled back – and Will thought, not for the first time, what a good-looking woman she was and wondered why men – if that was her preference, which it seemed to be – were not forever beating a path to her door.

Perhaps they were.

One sour and oddly possessive relationship aside, she had rarely, if ever, confided in Will about the vicissitudes of her private life – and only then because she had been hospitalised and feeling especially low.

‘Hi,’ Helen said cheerily now.

‘Hi yourself.’

‘Kids okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Lorraine?’

‘Likewise.’

Helen grinned. ‘Got it made, haven’t you?’

‘Have I?’

‘Beautiful wife, lovely kids, clear-up rate second to none.’

Will frowned. ‘Is there a point to this? Or is it just your normal common-or-garden goading for a Monday morning?’

Helen tilted her head sideways. ‘There’s a point.’

‘Because if it’s about your promotion, I’ve told you I’ll support—’

‘It’s not my promotion, long overdue as that might be.’

‘Then what?’

‘Mitchell Roberts.’

‘What about him?’

‘He’s being released.’

‘When?’

‘End of the week.’

‘Jesus!’

‘Supervision order, but . . .’ Helen shrugged.

‘Jesus!’ Will said again. ‘Jesus fuck!’

Helen ground her cigarette butt beneath her heel and followed him between the cars towards the entrance to the building.

As he hesitated, the figure – a girl, he was almost certain – pitched sideways towards the verge and was still. He swore to himself softly, shut off the engine and climbed down from the cab.

She lay with one leg stretched towards the road surface, the other buckled beneath her; the soles of her feet were bloodied and torn, cuts encrusted with gravel and gobbets of earth. She was wearing an oversized waxed jacket, unfastened, dark green and stained with oil, and nothing else. Her hips, barely pubescent, angled sharply against the thinness of her skin, and a few wisps of hair lay dark between her legs. Her breasts, little more than a boy’s, lightly rose and fell above the contour of her ribs. Her eyes were closed.

Without moving her, the driver covered her body as best as he could, then hurried back to the lorry and his mobile phone.

The first police car, north from Ely, was there in seven minutes, the ambulance in ten; Will, who had been attending a meeting at the Constabulary Headquarters in Huntingdon, arrived as the paramedics were lifting the girl on to a stretcher. She was too terrified to speak to anyone, even to say her own name. When Will leaned cautiously towards her, smiling encouragingly, she flinched.

It was several hours before they discovered her full name: Martina Ellis Jones. She lived with her mother and three siblings on an unofficial travellers’ site a mile or so from Littleport, a patch of unpromising land between the Old Croft River and Mow Fen.

When Will drove up the narrow road, little more than a lane, later that day, the sun sagged low in the sky, a deepening red splintered sharply with cloud.

Four caravans had been arranged in a rough circle, as if to keep out hostile elements and a searching wind. A bonfire, all but extinguished, smouldered on a patch of ground near the centre, an assortment of bicycles and children’s toys nearby. There were two cars just outside the circle; a third car, propped up on bricks and lacking its wheels, was further back down the lane.

When Will knocked on the door of the first caravan, a dog growled low in its throat and then, when he knocked again, began to bark; a voice from within shouted at it to stop, quickly followed by the sound of something being thrown and then a yelp before the silence resumed. Nobody came to the door.

Hostile elements – Will realised that was him.

By the time he’d reached the third caravan, his impatience was beginning to show: kicking low against the door, he called a warning about impeding the police in their inquiries. That and the girl’s name. Another dog started barking, different from the first; a different voice ordered it to be quiet, threatening the Lord knows what punishment, and it did.

Slowly, the door swung open.

The man standing there, his height causing him to crouch a little inside the frame, had a mane of silver-grey hair that spread across his shoulders and a nose that had been broken not once but several times. He was wearing a ragged pullover over a collarless shirt and black trousers with a piece of fraying rope for a belt; there was a polished walking stick in his right hand and he leaned his weight against it as he stood. For a moment, Will saw the dog between his legs, then it was gone.

‘Martina Jones,’ Will said.

‘What about her?’ The voice was cracked and harsh. Will would have put him at sixty or more if it hadn’t been for the brightness of his eyes.

‘She lives here?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Does she live here?’

‘Aye,’ the man said, ‘when she’s a mind.’

‘Maybe I could come inside?’ Will said.

The man didn’t move.

There were signs of life stirring around them, adult voices and children’s too; people beginning to show themselves, show an interest in what was going on.

‘Martina,’ the man said. ‘What’s she done now?’

‘Now?’

The man looked back at him, no flicker in those eyes.

‘What did you mean, now?’ Will asked.

‘It’s no matter.’

‘You suggested . . .’

‘I know what I suggested.’ He tapped his stick against the floor. ‘The girl, where is she?’

‘In the hospital. Huntingdon.’

‘Serious then?’

‘Serious enough.’

The man cursed and smacked the stick hard against the caravan side, setting off a young child crying inside. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘She was found walking along the main road, the A10.’

‘In Christ’s name,’ the man said, slamming his stick against the caravan again, ‘haven’t I warned her enough?’

‘Warned?’

‘Against wandering off.’

‘Martina’s mother,’ Will said, ‘is she here?’

‘Never mind her.’

‘If she’s here . . .’

‘You’re talking to me, that’s good enough.’

‘You’re Martina’s father?’

He laughed. ‘Do I look like her father?’

Will raised both shoulders in a shrug. ‘Is he here then? The father?’

‘If he were, I’d take his head off with this stick and feed it to the blasted crows.’

A youngish woman appeared behind him in the doorway, a baby, sticky-mouthed, at her open breast.

‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Is it Martina? Did he say Martina?’

‘Get back inside, woman, and for God’s sake cover yourself up.’

‘Someone should come to the hospital,’ Will said. ‘You and Martina’s mother. There’ll be questions to answer. How she came to be where she was. A few other things.’

He said nothing about what had appeared to be bite marks on the tops of the girl’s shoulders, the weal across her buttocks, the thin line of drying blood down the inside of her thigh. That would wait for later.

Martina’s mother, Gloria, had had Martina when she was just sixteen; there had been three other children since, two boys and a girl.

‘Running wild,’ Jones said, ‘the lot of ’em. It’s me as has to keep ’em under control.’

Will thought about the rough weal on the girl’s behind, the rope around the grandfather’s waist; about other things that might or might not have happened, things the older man might or might not have done.

Martina, it seemed, was forever running off, a habit, a compulsion: sometimes she would go no further than the edge of a nearby field and hide; at others she would lie down in an old farm building, the back of a tractor, an empty oil drum that had rolled on to its side. Most times, not always, she would come back of her own accord. Usually the same day. On this occasion she had been gone since late the previous afternoon.

‘You didn’t report her missing?’ Will asked.

Jones looked back at him as if he were some kind of fool.

‘You went looking for her?’

‘Of course we did. All on us. Not a bloody sign.’

‘She stayed out overnight.’

Jones looked at him evenly. ‘Somewhere.’

‘You know where that might be?’

‘Ask her, why don’t you?’

But Martina was not talking, not to her mother or her grandfather, not to the doctor or the nurses, certainly not to Will. Nor, when she arrived, to Helen, either. She lay there, uncomplaining, eyes squinched up tight, as they examined her internally and took swabs from various parts of her body.

She was no longer a virgin. She had had intercourse recently and, apart from some small abrasions, probably the result of her size, there was no evidence to suggest it had been other than consensual. There were faint traces of semen, along with saliva, on the backs of her legs and her chest.

When the grandfather was told, he showed little surprise, but grunted and looked across at the mother. ‘The fruit,’ he said, ‘don’t fall far from the tree.’

Will questioned him further, while Helen talked to Gloria, and then, fruitlessly again, Martina. Other members of the family were spoken to while officers made a thorough search of the caravan. Social workers were all over the other children like flies at midsummer.

It was only on the third afternoon, when Helen had all but despaired of Martina saying anything at all, that the girl mentioned Mitchell Roberts’ name. Just Mitchell at first.

‘Tell Mitchell,’ she said. ‘Tell him I’m okay. He’ll be worried about me, else.’

In one corner of the workshop Roberts kept a small stock of supplies for farmers who stopped by to refuel with diesel or replace a blown tyre: animal feed and fertiliser and galvanised feed scoops. From behind the till he sold cartons of long-life milk and cigarettes, boxes of cereal and chocolate bars well past their sell-by date; cans of Pepsi and 7-Up that were lukewarm because the refrigerator was always on the blink.

Will had asked about Roberts before he and Helen set off, had him checked out on the computer. At first pass, nothing known officially, no record. Seemed he’d taken over the establishment three years earlier, after it had lain in disuse for almost as long. Word was that he knew his way round a John Deere as well as most and could be relied upon in an emergency. In a part of the country where talk for talk’s sake wasn’t rated highly, he was considered sociable enough; ready if needed to down tools and pass an opinion on the weather – deteriorating – water levels – rising – and the way the price of fuel was shooting through the roof. Hadn’t going into Iraq been meant to settle all of that?

What kind of a life he had once the lights were off and the pumps were locked, nobody knew nor cared. Till now.

Will’s jacket lay along the rear seat and his shirt was sticking to his back; beside him, Helen had her window wound down and her fingers trailing in the air. The temperature in the car showed twenty-six degrees.

The waxed coat Martina Jones had been wearing was double-wrapped in plastic inside the boot.

Will brought the car to a halt well to the side of the road, nearside wheels in the dirt, and a lone crow hopped a short distance away and continued pecking at something on the ground.

‘God!’ Helen said, pushing the car door closed and looking round. ‘Can you imagine what it must be like? Living out somewhere like this?’

Will followed her gaze round the flat, almost bare landscape, the small rise to the west that some optimistic cartographer had labelled the Croft Hills.

‘I don’t have to imagine,’ he said.

Helen shook her head. ‘Where you live, it’s a metropolis compared to this.’

The man who came towards them from the building was medium-height, with pale sandy hair, wearing a plaid shirt beneath dungarees that had missed more than one turn in the wash. Forties, Will might have thought, mid to late forties, if he hadn’t already known Roberts to be fifty-two.

Roberts looked from Will to Helen and carefully back again. ‘You must be lost,’ he said.

‘You think?’

‘I know just about everyone lives round here and I in’t seen you afore, so ’less you’re visitin’ someone out by Home Farm or got some burnin’ desire to see the Hundred Foot Washes, I’d say, yes, you’re lost.’

‘Think again,’ Will said.

Roberts glanced over his shoulder at nothing. ‘You’re police then,’ he said.

Will held his warrant card out for him to see. ‘Mitchell Roberts?’ he said.

Roberts nodded. ‘Accordin’ to the Inland Revenue and a few other interested parties, yes. Most folk call me Mitch.’

‘She called you Mitchell,’ Helen said.

Roberts blinked. ‘She?’

‘Tell Mitchell not to worry, that’s what she said.’

Roberts took half a pace back, hand reaching down towards his hip.

‘Hurt your leg?’ Will said.

‘Tractor chassis fell on it a while back. Some days it hurts more than most.’

‘When you’re nervous maybe?’ Will suggested.

‘Am I nervous?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I don’t . . .’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know what this is about. Some woman tellin’ me not to worry.’

‘Not a woman,’ Helen said. ‘Not exactly.’

‘You said . . .’

‘More a girl.’

‘I don’t know any . . .’

‘Martina.’

‘Who?’

‘Martina Jones.’

‘No, I’m sorry, I . . .’ Raising a hand towards them, Roberts shook his head.

Will snapped the lock on the boot and, taking out the coat, still in its plastic wrapping, carried it towards him, folded over one arm. When he was almost level, he lifted the coat up for him to see.

‘Well,’ Roberts said, a look of relief spreading across his face. ‘Thank heaven for that. Thought I was never going to see that coat again.’

‘It’s yours?’

‘Yes, it’s mine. Know that thing anywhere, trussed up or not.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure as I’m standing here.’ He smiled. ‘Recognise just about every damn mark.’

‘Would you care to tell us how it came to be out of your possession?’ Will asked.

‘Out of my possession? Why, that little girl stole it, that’s how.’

A nerve began to beat alongside Will’s temple. ‘Which little girl is that?’

Roberts looked at him. ‘The one you was tellin’ me about, I suppose. What’d you say her name was?’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘No, I don’t remember.’

‘Martina,’ Will said quietly. ‘Martina Ellis Jones.’

Roberts scuffed the earth with his toe. ‘I never knew her name.’

‘But you gave her your coat.’

‘I never give her no coat, she stole the coat, I told you that.’

‘When was this?’

Roberts gave it some thought. ‘Must be three, no, four days ago now.’

Will and Helen exchanged a quick glance.

‘Suppose you tell us,’ Helen said, ‘exactly how Martina ended up with your coat.’

‘You want to come inside?’ Roberts said, shuffling a little to one side. ‘Get out of this heat. Got some pop in there or I can make a brew.’

Neither Will nor Helen had moved.

Roberts cleared his throat. ‘She’d come by here,’ he said, ‘her and her brothers. Sometimes another girl, too. They’d walk across the fields.’ He pointed towards a narrow gap in the low hedge, what might have been the beginnings of a track. ‘Gyppos, diddicoys, whatever you like to call ’em.’ He spat. ‘Sometimes they’d have money, stole from their mother’s purse likely as not, buy ’emselves a Pepsi or such. Caught one of the boys stealin’ a brace of Mars Bars once and took my boot to his backside. Chased ’em all off. Told ’em if they tried that, any one of ’em again, they could stay clear of my place an’ not come back.’

‘And did they?’ Will asked.

‘What?’

‘Come back?’

‘After a spell.’

‘Martina,’ Helen said, ‘did she ever come here on her own?’

Roberts swallowed and wiped a hand across his mouth. ‘Once in a while.’ Given the temperature, the way the perspiration was running freely down his face was no surprise.

‘Like the day she went away with your coat?’

‘Yes. Like that.’

‘Tell us what happened that day,’ Will said.

Roberts blinked the sweat away from his eyes. ‘Nothin’ to tell. I’d been working on this trailer best part of the afternoon, went back to the house to wash up and there she was.’

‘At the house?’

‘No. Sitting up in there on the counter, bold as you like, eatin’ a Twix. I remember sayin’to her, I hope you’re goin’ to pay for that.’

‘And did she?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘She had money?’

‘How else was she goin’ to pay?’

Will looked at him. ‘You took her back into the house?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Maybe to get the coat?’

Roberts shook his head. ‘That coat always hung from a peg right in there.’ He pointed through the open workshop door. ‘I can show you if you’d like.’

‘Later,’ Will said.

‘Why did you give her the coat?’ Helen asked.

‘I didn’t give her the damned thing. I told you. She took it while my back was turned an’ run off with it, that’s what happened.’

‘Now why would she do that?’

‘How should I know? Her kind, see something they can lay their hands on an’ it’s gone.’

‘Her kind?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Hot, wasn’t it, four days ago?’ Will said, more conversational than anything else.

‘I dare say.’

‘Hot like this?’

‘Just about.’

‘Yet she took your coat, this heavy adult coat, where was the point in that?’

‘Like I said, if it ain’t nailed down . . .’

‘Come on,’ Helen said, fixing him with her eyes. ‘You can do better than that.’

‘I don’t see what you mean.’

‘You don’t see what I mean? When that girl was found, running, running scared, half out of her wits, your coat aside, she was naked as the day she was born. Not a stitch on, not a stitch.’

‘I don’t know ’bout that.’

‘You don’t think that’s why she took your coat? To cover herself. After what had happened.’

Roberts pressed his hand harder against his leg.

‘What did you do with her clothes?’ Will asked. ‘Burn them? Make a bonfire somewhere? Or are they still back in the house?’

‘Look,’ Roberts said, ‘I don’t know why . . .’

‘Souvenirs,’ Helen said, ‘isn’t that what you call them? Isn’t that what you like? Your kind?’

Something sprang to life in Roberts’ eyes. ‘Fuck you!’ he said. ‘You bitch! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!’

‘Mitchell Roberts,’ Will said, ‘I am arresting you . . .’

They’d been looking at him, of course, the grandfather. Questions, evidence, intimate samples, DNA. The broken skin and the bruising to his granddaughter’s buttocks, Samuel Jones readily pleaded guilty to. Discipline, that’s what she’d needed. Too little too late, and that’s the truth. Jones staring back at Will with all-too-clear eyes, as if daring him to disagree. Daring him to ask why she’d spent nights sleeping in the back of a straw-strewn trailer instead of the comfort of her own bed; why she’d trekked across open fields and skirted drainage ditches to Mitchell Roberts’ home, not once but several times.

In the end there was nothing to suggest that Jones had abused his granddaughter sexually; he had simply, to Will’s mind, driven her into the arms of someone who would do that for him.

‘You can’t blame him,’ Helen said. ‘Jones. Not for what someone else did.’

‘Can’t I?’ Will said.

An analysis of both the bite marks and traces of semen on Martina’s body left Mitchell Roberts’ defence with nowhere profitable to go. Concerned, however, as to how Martina might stand up if she were called to give evidence in court, the prosecution accepted two guilty pleas of indecent assault and one of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under thirteen, and Roberts was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.

Since which time, by Will’s estimation, he had served a little over half. Less than enough. Will would have been happy if once they’d locked him up they’d thrown away the key.

But Ruth had surprised herself – and Simon, she was sure – by sticking to her guns, and once he saw there would be no altering her mind, no going back, he had, to give him credit, been more thoughtful than she might have expected, conciliatory even, and, in the event, being awarded her decree nisi had been like having a tooth removed under anaesthetic, no more troubling than that. You walked in and only minutes later, or so it seemed, you walked out, admittedly with your tongue unable, for now, to stop touching the place where, for years, that particular tooth had been. Searching for a twinge of pain that was not really there.

Friends from work, the ones she considered close enough to tell, had shown not much more surprise than her father; had thought it what she needed, someone to help her refocus her life, someone new. Even those few friends she and Simon had shared, when they heard, for the most part agreed she was making the right decision.

Even when she had finally plucked up the courage to tell Simon himself that she’d met somebody else, he’d been more reasonable than she’d had any right to expect. Oh, not straight away, of course, not immediately – but once he’d got over the initial surprise.

They had met in a café near the Angel, not so far from the local government offices where Simon worked. Ruth had phoned him just two days before: she was coming down to London to do a bit of shopping, maybe they could meet for a coffee or something? Making it all seem as casual as she could.

‘Of course,’ he’d said. ‘How about the afternoon? Shall we say three? Three-fifteen? I’m supposed to have a meeting but I can always shunt it around.’

And when she’d asked was he sure, not wanting to make a mess of his day, having cold feet if the truth were told, he’d laughed her down.

‘Come on, Ruthie, always time for you, you know that. Besides, it’s been a long time. If I don’t see you soon I shall forget what you look like.’

Ruthie: how she hated it when he called her that.

At first glance, Simon had scarcely changed at all. Still neat inside his soft grey suit. But he was thin, she noticed, thinner than before, his cheekbones more prominent, and there were worry lines around his eyes.

What was he now? Forty-two? Forty-three? When she had looked at herself in the mirror that morning she’d seen a woman who, in a kind light, might just pass for forty-five. She was thirty-eight.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ Simon said.

Ruth gave a quick smile to show that it was perfectly all right.

She had felt only a little awkward sitting there, in that busy interior, surrounded by people who were mostly younger and more casually, more fashionably dressed than herself. Men and women pecking away at their laptops or having brightly animated conversations in several languages, voices raised above the intermittent shrill of the coffee machine and the rhythmic jousting of world music through the speakers.

‘Another coffee?’

‘No, thanks. I’m fine.’

He smiled and turned in the direction of the counter, returning minutes later with a small flat white.

‘Decaf now in the afternoons, I’m afraid. Get too hyper otherwise. Start throwing things around the office.’

‘I doubt that.’

He smiled. ‘You’d be surprised.’

‘I would,’ Ruth said.

When they’d learned what had happened to their daughter he had lost his temper certainly with those he blamed, but almost never with her. And later, while they were still trying to come to terms with what had happened, he had taken himself off and cried quietly in corners, as if his grief were something not for sharing. Real and immediate and his own.

‘So,’ he said, taking a sip of his coffee, ‘what is it exactly?’

‘Nothing special, I told you. I was just coming down and . . .’

‘Ruth, you live just outside Ely, not at the ends of the earth. You must have been in London half a dozen times in the past eighteen months if not more. If you’d wanted to see me, just to chat, find out how I was getting on, you could have done so easily.’

‘Simon . . .’

‘No, that’s all right. It’s fine. Remaining friends, it’s not what you wanted. And I respected that. I understood. A clean break. Easier, much easier. For you, at least.’ He made a small sound through his nose. ‘We deal with these things in our different ways.’

Oh, God, Ruth thought. She pushed the spoon around the inside of her empty cup. ‘I’ve met someone,’ she said, her voice so low that Simon had to lean forward, his expression suggesting he hadn’t heard or didn’t understand.

‘I’ve met someone,’ she said again, too loud this time, and the young woman sitting next to them – Spanish? South American? – glanced up from the book she was reading and smiled.

It took Simon a few moments to respond.

‘You mean, as in . . . Yes. Yes, of course you do. And it’s serious?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well . . . well, I don’t know what to say. I’m surprised, that’s all. I thought maybe, whatever you had to tell me, it was about your family – your dad, I know he’s not been too well – I thought perhaps you were moving up to Cumbria to be closer to them.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t expect this.’

‘No.’ She laughed, self-consciously. ‘Not exactly love’s young dream.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘Simon . . .’

‘I thought you wanted to be on your own. I thought that was the point.’ His fingernails, she noticed, were bitten almost down to the quick.

‘It was,’ she said. ‘Believe me. This was the last thing in the world I expected to happen.’

‘Almost.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Almost the last. Not as unexpected as . . .’ A shadow passed behind his eyes.

‘Simon, I’m sorry, I . . .’

‘No, no, congratulations. Really. I mean it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘So where did he come from, this Prince Charming? This Lochinvar?’

‘Don’t mock.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Perhaps I should never have told you. I’m not sure why I did, it just seemed important, that’s all.’

‘Yes, of course. I understand. Least, I think I do. And I’m pleased, pleased that’s what you felt. Pleased for you, too. I really am.’ Squeezing out a smile, he leaned across the table and aimed an awkward kiss at her cheek.

‘I should be going,’ Ruth said. She felt flustered, uncomfortable, conscious of the young woman next to her looking on with unfeigned interest, and wished she had never come.

Outside, they stood for a moment on the pavement, side by side. There was an odd pallor to his skin, she thought, as if lately he had not been much exposed to the light.

‘Simon,’ she said, ‘you are all right?’

‘Me? Yes, of course. Of course I am, what did you think?’

And he was on his way, threading through the traffic that spread in both directions along Upper Street in a slow-moving, never-ending trail.

Catriona and her husband, Lyle, had retired to Ely two years before; Lyle, laid off after two decades in the engineering department of Rolls-Royce Aerospace, had chosen to spend part of his redundancy money on a vintage 27-foot motor launch, which he kept moored on the marina.

Catriona was good at talking Ruth into accompanying her to the latest foreign film at the Maltings or the new exhibition at the Babylon Gallery – Ruth had once let slip that she used to paint herself, so Catriona was forever bowing to her greater knowledge and asking Ruth to explain the inexplicable. She had even cajoled Ruth into going along with herself and Lyle to the occasional Ely Folk Club evening at the Lamb, where Lyle joined in the choruses far too loudly after too much beer. And then, of course, there were trips along the Great Ouse, Lyle as proud of the pulling power of his craft’s 80-hp diesel engine as he was of its oak frames and teak planking and traditional coir-rope fender.

They had listened, both of them, to Ruth’s story and decided, good-hearted people that they were, that she should not be allowed to wither on the vine. Get out and meet people, make new friends, a new life. Ruth had already arranged to shadow one of the staff at Ely library for five hours a week, but Catriona had something less bookish in mind.

At dinner parties she and Lyle would introduce her to what they clearly saw as eligible men, for one reason or another unattached: a widower who had recently lost his wife to cancer; a Cambridge academic, never married, with an interest in liturgical history; a folk musician whose speciality was the penny whistle.

And then there was Andrew. Andrew Lawson.

Four-square, seemingly dependable, the head of a local primary school, on that first evening he was close to self-effacing. The only time he became particularly animated was when describing a new mentoring scheme in which year five and six pupils read to the younger ones from years one and two.

‘Ruth used to be a teacher,’ Catriona had said, oiling the wheels.

‘That was a good while ago,’ Ruth said.

But Andrew’s interest was caught. ‘Here in Ely?’ he asked.

‘No. In London.’

‘Secondary?’

‘Primary.’

‘Still, pretty tough all the same. Most of the kids round here, the villages especially, have them eating out of your hand.’

‘That’s because,’ Lyle boomed, ‘they’ve never learned to use a bloody knife and fork.’

Everyone laughed and the conversation moved on.

Ruth was surprised when, four days later, Andrew called her at home. ‘Catriona gave me your number, I hope you don’t mind.’

Even more to her surprise, she found she didn’t mind at all.

Of course, he’d been married before. It had lasted ten years, almost as long as her own. Andrew’s wife had fallen in love with a young New Zealand woman who had briefly been teaching at his school and whom he’d invited home several times out of kindness, not wanting her to feel isolated and alone.

When it became clear where her affections were leaning, his wife moved out of the family home into a flat of her own. Andrew kept his head down: there was a new round of SATs tests to prepare for, an Ofsted inspection looming, the budget to be readied for the next governors’ meeting, a new special needs coordinator to be appointed.

Eighteen months later his wife was on her way out to New Zealand with her lover and as far as Andrew knew the pair of them were still living on the South Island, in Dunedin, a place which Andrew, in a rare coarse and less than cautious moment, had once described as being just a fingertip away from the arsehole of the world.

At least they had never had children: that was a blessing.

When, later, Ruth asked him why, he told her that for the first few years they had both said it was too soon, too early, they should wait, and then, after a few more years, neither of them had mentioned it at all.

Ruth had become pregnant with Heather not long after she and Simon had married, almost without thinking about it, something that just happened. She had been twenty-six.

It was not the easiest of births and afterwards Ruth had suffered quite badly from post-natal depression. For a time, she’d come close to rejecting Heather altogether – something for which she felt forever guilty – and if it hadn’t been for Simon the whole situation might have imploded.

It wasn’t until Heather was practically a toddler that she and Ruth had really bonded, though Simon had remained very much a part of her life, closer perhaps than many fathers.

They talked of having another child, but Ruth was frightened and Simon wary. ‘We’re happy now, aren’t we,’ he said. ‘As we are? Why change things? Eh, Ruthie? Why take a risk?’

‘I envy you,’ Andrew said. This was some little while after their first meeting, after they had begun talking about the possibility of getting married themselves. ‘I shouldn’t say it, probably shouldn’t think it, no right, but I do. You and Simon. What you had with Heather.’

‘Even after what happened?’ Ruth asked.

Andrew looked at her, seeing the residue of pain he could never hope to clear from her eyes. ‘Yes. Even after that.’

It wasn’t so very long after the wedding – Catriona jubilant in a suit of shocking pink with orchids in her hair; Lyle, florid-faced, taking none-too-secret nips from a silver flask – that Andrew suggested they had a child themselves.

‘Andrew, no! No, that’s ridiculous. It’s not . . . Besides, I’m too old.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘I am. You know I am.’

‘Let’s see.’

Beatrice was born almost exactly a year after they were married, and for all that Ruth was by then thirty-nine, there were no complications and it was a relatively easy birth.

Simon, when he heard – she had to tell him, had thought it through, talked it over with Andrew, and decided it was the only thing to do – was magnanimous: he sent a card with congratulations, a bottle of Moët, and a selection of knitted bootees and such from the Baby Gap near where he worked.

Ruth, feeling awkward and oddly beholden, sent him an effusive thank-you note and pictures of the baby, but to these Simon made no reply.

Five months later she received a letter. Brief and to the point: