Tracy handed over an envelope bursting with notes. ‘Expensive business,’ she said. Second envelope this week, this one containing a lot more money than the first. She had definitely joined the cash economy.

‘You’re not in a position to bargain, Superintendent.’

‘Just saying.’

‘Did you instruct your solicitor to get a move on with the sale of your house?’

‘Yes.’

He sighed the sigh of a put-upon entrepreneur. ‘It takes bloody weeks to buy or sell a house, all those searches and surveys. Ridiculous amount of bureaucracy. A man’s money and his word should be enough. And don’t get me started on the money laundering regulations. Gone are the good old days when you could just go out and buy a nice little piece of real estate with the cash in your pocket.’

‘Yeah, those good old days,’ Tracy said. ‘Everybody misses them. Especially the criminals.’

‘You’re in no position to throw stones, Superintendent. Anyway, don’t worry, I can get it pushed through. Expedited is the word, I believe. Nice word. Stay in touch with your solicitor. Solicitor sells the house to me, I’ll take my finder’s fee, as it were, and put the rest into the new bank account you’re going to set up.’

‘I threw my phone away.’

‘Wise move. They can find you anywhere these days if you’ve got a phone. Hang on,’ he said and disappeared out of the room. Tracy could hear him moving about upstairs. Courtney had her face glued to the patio doors, watching the fish pond. Tracy caught sight of a big blue-and-white-marbled fish gliding by like a cruising submarine.

Harry Reynolds came back in the room with a carrier bag of clothes. ‘Some stuff in here of Ashley’s and my wife’s. She was a big woman, they should fit. I should have cleared her things out before now, given them to charity or whatever. Susan’s always on to me. Doesn’t like seeing her mum’s things around the house when she comes.’ He drooped, suddenly an old man without a wife. He noticed Courtney’s grubby face-print on the glass of the patio doors and absent-mindedly took out a handkerchief and polished the imprint away.

‘Here,’ he said, putting his hand into the bag of clothes and coming out with a couple of mobile phones that he handed over to Tracy, saying, ‘Throw them away when you’ve used them once. They’re pre-paid.’

‘Of course they are,’ Tracy said. An old age pensioner with a wardrobe full of burner phones, what was there to be surprised at in that?

The doorbell rang and Harry Reynolds hurried off to answer it.

‘That’ll be Brett and Ashley then,’Tracy said, raising an eyebrow at Courtney. She raised an eyebrow back, an enigmatic response.

Harry Reynolds’s grandchildren rushed into the house and were brought up short by the sight of Courtney, a scruffy cuckoo usurping their place in the nest. They were dressed in mufti, Brett in a Leeds United football strip, Ashley in jeans and a pink velour High School Musical hoodie. Courtney stared open-mouthed at this unattainable vision of pre-pubescent chic.

Their mother blustered into the room behind them and said, ‘What’s all this then?’

‘Nothing, Susan,’ Harry Reynolds said, placatory, slightly cowed. ‘An old friend, passing by. Dropped in.’

Tracy wondered if Harry Reynolds’s daughter knew what kind of ‘old friends’ her father used to have, or did she think all this – the roast beef, the school fees, the koi – was the just rewards for clean living and hard work? ‘Don’t worry, we’re just going,’ Tracy said.

‘I’ll escort you to the door, shall I?’ Harry said, sounding like a policeman.

*

The Avensis was parked outside. Brian Jackson was leaning against the bonnet, smoking. He raised a cigarette in mute greeting when he saw them.

‘Who’s this?’ Harry Reynolds muttered to Tracy when he saw him.

‘Nobody,’ Tracy said.

‘Well, have a nice life, Superintendent,’ Harry Reynolds said.

‘Try my best,’ Tracy said.

1975: 21 March

A toddler! Darling little thing, in her pyjamas, fast asleep, wrapped in a dirty old blanket. Had there been an accident of some kind? Ray Strickland was white, he looked as if he’d just witnessed something dreadful.

‘Come in, it’s freezing out there,’ Ian said. He led Ray into the living room, sat him down, poured him a huge tumbler of whisky. Ray’s hand was shaking so much that he couldn’t get it to his lips.

‘What happened, Strickland?’ Ian asked. He was kneeling beside him, checking the girl to see if she was injured in some way. Kitty felt a rush of pride in her husband’s expertise. ‘Who is she, Ray?’ Ian asked but Ray just shook his head.

‘Is she all right?’ Ray asked and Ian nodded and said, ‘As far as I can make out.’ Kitty took the little girl from Ray and wrapped her up in a clean blanket. ‘There, snug as a bug in a rug,’ she said, holding her in her arms. The girl didn’t stir. The solid weight of the child felt so lovely. Imagine if she was yours to keep, to hold like this every day. Kitty Winfield brushed her sleeping daughter’s hair from her face.

‘Will you take her?’ Ray said.

‘Take her?’ Kitty echoed. ‘For the night?’

‘For good.’

‘Mine? To keep? For ever?’ Kitty said.

‘Ours,’ Ian said.

*

A couple of weeks later, over a nice candlelit dinner at home, Ian poured her a glass of wine and said, ‘I’ve been offered a job in New Zealand, I thought it best if I take it.’

‘Oh God, yes, darling,’ Kitty said. ‘That’s perfect. We can leave everything behind, start again where no one knows anything about us. You are clever.’

A plague upon this howling! The wild waters roaring in her head. Tilly had run out of Bluebell Cottage, abuse from Saskia echoing in her ears, got into her car and driven off. She wanted to go home. She needed a train, trains were in stations, the station was in Leeds. Something horrible had happened to Tilly in Leeds but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was exactly. Something to do with a child. A child, a poor, poor child. A little black thing in the snow. Her little black baby.

When she had kissed her lovely Nigerian man at Leicester Square tube station, he said to her, ‘Shall I call for you tonight, perhaps you’d like to go to the cinema, perhaps some supper afterwards?’

‘That would be wonderful,’ Tilly said.

‘I’ll call for you,’ he said. ‘About seven.’

She spent the whole day thinking about him, wondering what to wear, how to do her hair. She was absolutely useless in rehearsal but she didn’t care, her heart was skipping. She got home at six, got ready in a terrific rush and then stood at the window looking down at the street, waiting for a glimpse of her handsome new man.

Was still standing there at eight, at nine. At ten she knew he wasn’t coming. Understood he would never come.

It was only much later that she learned that he had got lost. He had never written down her address, thought he could easily find his way back to her flat but once he was in Soho he realized he had mistaken her street. He had wandered up and down and all around the houses, looking for some familiar landmark, some reminder of where he had been the night before. He had even tried doors and got short shrift because of his colour, except from some of the ladies who had cards above their doorbells. Nearly midnight when he gave up and went home.

The next day he tried to track her down again. He had done the rounds of the theatres asking about her and in one someone directed him to Phoebe, about to go into a matinee performance of Pygmalion. He recognized her from the party at the embassy. She told him that yes, she knew Tilly, in fact Tilly was her best friend and had told her all about the previous night’s ‘tryst’, and ‘I am afraid I am the bearer of bad news,’ she said, her hand sincerely on her heart, or where her heart would have been if she had had one. Phoebe went on to inform him that Tilly had realized, in the cold light of day, that she did not want to see him again. It had been a mistake, she had been carried away. ‘You understand?’ Phoebe said. He did. ‘So sorry,’ Phoebe said, ‘that’s the beginners’ call, I must go.’