They had met over an accident, of course, how else did the police meet people? Two years ago, Louise had been on the M8, driving to Glasgow for a meeting with Strathclyde Police, when she saw the crash happen on the opposite carriageway.

She was first on the scene, arriving before the emergency services, but there was nothing she could do. A sixteen-wheeler had smashed into the back of a little three-door saloon, two baby seats crammed in the back, the mother driving, her teenage sister in the passenger seat. The car had been stationary in a queue at temporary traffic lights at some roadworks. The driver hadn't seen the signs for the roadworks, hadn't seen the queue of traffic, and only caught the briefest glimpse of the little three-door saloon before he rammed into it at sixty miles an hour. The truck driver was texting. A classic. Louise arrested him at the scene. She would have liked to kill him at the scene. Or preferably run him over slowly with his own truck. She was beginning to notice that she was more bloodthirsty than she used to be (and that was saying something).

The car and everyone in it was completely crushed. Because she was the smallest, slimmest person at the scene, Louise ('Can you try, boss?') had squeezed a hand through what had once been a window, trying to search for pulses, trying to count bodies, find some ID. They hadn't even known there were babies in the back until Louise's ~ngers had brushed against a tiny limp hand. Grown men wept, mcludmg the traffic cop who was the family liaison officer, and good old L' -har -'1 d' vlllegar -put an arm round him and OUlse d b 01 e III . said, 'Well, Jesus, we're only human: and volunteered to be the one to tell the next of kin, which was, without doubt, the worst job in the world. She seemed to be more faint-hearted than she used to be. Bloodthirsty yet faint-hearted.

A week later she had attended the funeral. All four of them at once. It had been unbearable but it had to be borne because that's what people did, they went on. One foot after another, slogging it out day by day. If her own child died, Louise wouldn't keep on going, she would take herself out, something nice and neat, nothing messy for the emergency services to deal with afterwards.

Archie wanted driving lessons for his seventeenth birthday and Patrick said, 'Good idea, Archie. If you pass your test we'll get you a decent second-hand car.' Louise, meanwhile, was trying to think of ways of preventing Archie from ever sitting in the driving seat of a vehicle. She wondered if it was possible to gain access to the DVLA computer and put some kind of stop on his provisional licence. She was a chief inspector, it shouldn't be beyond her, being police was just the obverse of being criminal, after all.

The driver of the car in front had been badly injured as well and it had been Patrick who had spent hours in the operating theatre putting the man's leg back together. The truck driver, who didn't even have a bruise, was sentenced to three years in jail and was probably out by now. Louise would have removed his organs without anaesthetic and given them to more worthy people. Or so she told Patrick afterwards over a nasty cup of coffee in the hospital staff canteen. 'Life's random,' he said. 'The best you can do is pick up the pieces.' He wasn't police but it wasn't like marrying out. He understood.

He was Irish, which always helped. A man with an Irish accent could sound wise and poetic and interesting even when he wasn't. But Patrick was all of those things. 'Between wives at the moment,' he said and she had laughed. She hadn't wanted a diamond, big or otherwise, but she'd ended up with one anyway. 'You can cash it in when you divorce me,' he said. She liked the way he took over in that authoritative way, didn't stand for any of her shit yet was always amiable about it, as if she was precious and yet flawed and the flaws could be fixed. Of course, he was a surgeon, he thought everything could be fixed. Flaws could never be fixed. She was the golden bowl, sooner or later the crack would show. And who would pick up the pieces then?

For the first time in her life she had relinquished control. And what did that do to you? It sent you completely off-balance, that's what it did.

Or a centrepiece for the dining-room table. Something smallish, something red. For the red figure in the carpet. Not roses. Red roses said the wrong thing. Louise wasn't sure what they said but whatever it was, it was wrong.

'Don't try so hard,' Patrick laughed.

But she was no good at this stuff and if she didn't try she would fail. 'I can't do relationships,' she said, the first morning they woke up in bed together.

'Can't or won't?' he said.

He had broken her in as if she was a high-strung, untamed horse.

(But what ifhe had just broken her?) One step at a time, softly, softly, until she was caught. The taming of the shrew. Shrews were small harmless furry things, they didn't deserve their bad reputation.

He knew how to do it. He had been happily married for fifteen years before a carload of teenage joyriders overtaking on a bit of single carriageway on the A9 had smashed head-on into his wife's Polo, ten years ago. Whoever invented the wheel had a lot to answer for. Samantha. Patrick and Samantha. He hadn't been able to fix her, had he? She still had enough time, time to buy the flowers, time to shop in Waitrose in Morningside, time to cook dinner. Sea bass on a bed of Puy lentils, twice-baked Roquefort souffles to start, a lemon tart to finish. Why make it easy when you could make it as difficult for yourself as possible? She was a woman so, technically speaking, she could do anything. The Roquefort souffles were a Delia Smith recipe. The rise and fall of the bourgeoisie. Ha, ha. Oh, God. What was happening to her, she was turning into a normal person. She was buzzing with tiredness, that was what was wrong with her. (Why? Why was she so tired?) In a former life, before her beauty was measured in the size ofa diamond, she would have wound down with a (very large) drink, ordered in a pizza, taken out her contacts, put her feet up and watched some rubbish on television but now here she was running around like a blue-arsed fly worrying about delphiniums and cooking Delia recipes. Was there any way back from here?

'We can cancel,' Patrick said on the phone. 'It's no big deal, you're tired.' No big deal to him maybe, huge deal to her. Patrick's sister and her husband, up from Bournemouth or Eastbourne, somewhere like that. Irish diaspora. They were everywhere, like the Scots.

'They'll be happy with cheese on toast, or we'll get a takeaway,' Patrick said. He was so damned relaxed about everything. And what would they think if she didn't make an effort? They had missed the wedding but then everyone missed the wedding. The sister (Bridget) was obviously already put out by the whole wedding thing. 'Just the two ofus, in a registry office,' Louise said to Patrick, when she finally gave in and said yes.

'What about Archie?' Patrick said.

'Does he have to come?'

'Yes, he's your son, Louise.' Actually Archie had behaved well, looking after the ring, cheering in a mumed, self-conscious way when Louise said, 'I do.' Patrick's own son, Jamie, didn't come to the wedding. He was a post-grad on an archaeology dig in the middle of a godforsaken nowhere. He was one of those outdoor types -skiing, surfing, scuba-diving -'a real boy', Patrick said. In contrast to her own boy, her little Pinocchio.

They had brought in two people from the next wedding to be witnesses and gave them each a good bottle of malt as a thank you. Louise had worn a dress in raw silk, in what the personal shopper in Harvey Nichols had referred to as 'oyster' although to Louise it just looked grey. But it was pretty without being fussy and it showed off her good legs. Patrick had arranged flowers or she wouldn't have bothered -an old-fashioned posy of pink roses for her and pink rosebuds for the buttonholes for himself and Archie.