He would donate something towards the kid’s train fare. It wasn’t his fault the woman – Jess? – had decided to drive an untaxed, uninsured car, after all. If you looked at it on paper – the cops, the weird kids, the night-time joyriding – she was trouble. And Ed Nicholls did not need any more trouble in his life.

With these thoughts in his head, he washed, brushed his teeth and fell into the first decent sleep he’d had in weeks.

He pulled up outside the gate shortly after nine. He had meant to be there earlier but couldn’t remember where the house was, and given that the estate was a sprawling mass of identikit streets, he had driven up and down blindly for almost thirty minutes until he recognized Seacole Avenue. It was only the pub that got him there in the end.

It was a damp, still morning, the air heavy with moisture. The street was empty, apart from a ginger cat, which stalked its way along the pavement, its tail a question mark. Danehall seemed a little less unfriendly in daylight, but he still found himself double-checking he’d locked the car once he’d stepped out of it.

He gazed up at the windows, hoping he’d got the right place. Pink and white bunting hung in one of the upstairs rooms, and two hanging baskets swung listlessly from the front porch. A car sat under a tarpaulin in the next driveway. But the real giveaway was lumbering slowly around the front garden, pausing only to lift its leg against a child’s bicycle. Jesus. That dog. The size of it. Ed pictured it lolling over his back seat the previous evening. A faint echo of its scent had remained when he climbed back in this morning.

He opened the latch of the gate warily, in case it went for him, but it simply turned its enormous head with mild disinterest, walked to the shade of a weedy tree and flopped down on its side, lifting a desultory front leg as if in the vague hope it might get its stomach scratched.

‘I’ll pass, thanks,’ Ed said.

He walked up the path and paused at the door. He had his little speech all prepared.

Hi, I’m really sorry but something very important has come up with work and I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to take the next couple of days off. However, I’d be happy to contribute something to your daughter’s Olympiad fund. I think it’s great that she’s working so hard at her studies. So here’s her train fare.

If it sounded a little less convincing in his head this morning than it had done last night, well, it couldn’t be helped. He was about to knock when he saw the note, half attached to the door with a pin, flapping in the breeze:

FISHER YOU LITTLE WASTE OF SKIN I HAVE TOLD THE POLICE THAT IF ANYONE BREAKS IN IT WILL BE YOU AND THEY ARE WATCHING

As he straightened up the door opened. The little girl stood there. ‘We’re all packed,’ she said, squinting, her head tilted to one side. ‘Mum said you wouldn’t come but I knew you would so I said I wouldn’t let her unpack the suitcases until ten. And you made it with fifty-three minutes to spare. Which is actually about thirty-three minutes better than I estimated.’

He blinked.

‘Mum!’ She pushed the door open. Jess was standing in the hallway, as if she had stopped dead halfway down it. She was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her hair was clipped up. She did not look like someone preparing to travel the length of the country.

‘Hi.’ Ed smiled awkwardly.

‘Oh. Okay.’

She shook her head. And he realized the child had been telling the truth: she really hadn’t expected him to turn up. ‘I’d offer you a coffee, but I got rid of the last of the milk before we set off last night.’

Before he could answer, the boy sloped past, rubbing his eyes. His face was still swollen, and now coloured an impressionist palette of purples and yellows. He gazed at the pile of holdalls and bin bags in the hall and said, ‘Which of these are we taking?’

‘All of them,’ said the little girl. ‘And I packed Norman’s blanket.’

Jess looked at Ed warily. He made to open his mouth, but nothing came out. The entire length of the hallway was lined with battered paperbacks. He wasn’t sure why that surprised him.

‘Can you pick up this bag, Mr Nicholls?’ The little girl tugged it towards him. ‘I did try and lift it earlier because Nicky can’t pick stuff up right now but it’s too heavy for me.’

‘Sure.’ He found himself stooping, but stopped for a moment before he lifted it. How was he going to do this?

‘Listen. Mr Nicholls …’ Jess was in front of him. She looked as uncomfortable as he did. ‘About this trip –’

And then the front door flew open. A woman stood in jogging bottoms and a T-shirt, a baseball bat raised in her hand.

‘DROP THEM!’ she roared.

He froze.

‘PUT YOUR HANDS UP!’

‘Nat!’ Jess shouted. ‘Don’t hit him!’

He lifted them slowly, turning to face her.

‘What the –’ The woman looked past Ed at Jess. ‘Jess? Oh, my God. I thought someone was in your house.’

‘Someone is in my house. Me.’

The woman dropped the bat, then looked in horror at him. ‘Oh, my God. It’s – Oh, God, oh, God, I’m so sorry. I saw the front door and I honestly thought you were a burglar. I thought you were … you know who.’ She laughed nervously, then pulled an agonized face at Jess, as if he couldn’t see her.

Ed let out a breath. The woman put the bat behind her and tried to smile. ‘You know how it is around here …’

He took a step backwards and gave a small nod. ‘Okay, well … I just need to get my phone. Left it in the car.’

He edged past her with his palms up and headed down the path. He opened and shut the car door, then locked it again, just to give himself something to do, trying to think clearly over the ringing in his ears. Just drive off, a little voice said. Just go. You never have to see her again. You do not need this right now.

Ed liked order. He liked to know what was coming. Everything about this woman suggested the kind of … boundarylessness that made him nervous.

He walked halfway back up the path, trying to formulate the right words. As he approached the house, he could just hear them talking behind the half-closed door, their voices carrying across the little garden.

‘I’m going to tell him no.’

‘You can’t, Jess.’ The boy’s voice. ‘Why?’

‘Because it’s too complicated. I work for him.’

‘You clean his house. That’s not the same thing.’

‘We don’t know him, then. How can I tell Tanzie not to get in cars with men she doesn’t know, and then do exactly that?’

‘He wears glasses. He’s hardly going to be a serial killer.’

‘Tell that to Dennis Nielsen’s victims. And Harold Shipman’s.’

‘You know way too many serial killers.’

‘We’ll set Norman on him if he does anything bad.’ The boy’s voice again.

‘Yes. Because Norman has been so useful, protecting this family in the past.’

‘Mr Nicholls doesn’t know that, does he?’

‘Look. He’s just some bloke. He probably got caught up in the drama last night. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to do it. We’ll – we’ll just let Tanzie down gently.’

Tanzie. Ed watched her running around the back garden, her hair flying out behind her. He watched the dog shambling back towards the door, half dog, half yak, leaving an intermittent snail trail of drool behind him.

‘I’m wearing him out so that he’ll sleep most of the journey.’ She appeared in front of him, panting.

‘Right.’

‘I’m really good at maths. We’re going to an Olympiad so I can win money to go to a school where I can do A-level maths. Do you know what my name is, converted to binary code?’

He looked at her. ‘Is Tanzie your full name?’

‘No. But it’s the one I use.’

He blew out his cheeks. ‘Um. Okay. 01010100   01100001   01101110   01111010   01101001   01100101.’