It was only because she saw an obituary in the newspaper that she knew her own father was dead. His fifth, forgetful wife had omitted to tell her and had him cremated and scattered before she even knew he'd finally gone. He was living in Rio when he died, like a criminal or a Nazi. The fifth wife was Brazilian and Howard might have neglected to tell her that he had a daughter.

She could have sunk but school made up for the Masons' shortcomings. By sheer chance Howard put her into a boarding school that fostered her and cared for her and in return she proved buoyant, embracing school life with the order of its days and the comfort of its rules.

By the time Joanna left school for university Howard had worked his way through another wife and a couple ofmistresses but he never had any more children. 'I had my children,' he would drunkenly declare in company, like a grandstanding tragic actor. 'They are not replaceable.'

'You still have Joanna,' someone would remind him and he would say, 'Yes, of course. Thank God, I still have Joanna.'

'There were ten in the bed,' she sang quietly to the baby, even though he was asleep. 'And the little one said, "Roll over, roll over." , He had fallen asleep easily on the lumpy mattress they were sharing but woke as usual at four in the morning for a feed. The time of night when people died and were born, when the body offered least resistance to the coming and going of the soul. Joanna didn't believe in God, how could she, but she believed in the existence of the soul, believed indeed in the transference of the soul and although she wouldn't have stood up at a scientific conference and declared it, she also believed that she carried the souls of her dead family inside her and one day the baby would do the same for her. Just because you were a rational and sceptical atheist didn't mean that you didn't have to get through every day the best way you could. There were no rules.

The best days of her life had been when she was pregnant and the baby was still safe inside her. Once you were out in the world, then the rain fell on your face and the wind lifted your hair and the sun beat down on you and the path stretched ahead of you and evil walked on it.

It was black night outside, a winter-white moon rising. The baby was the same age as Joseph was when he died. His foot stopped short when he was so young that it was impossible to imagine what kind of a man Joseph would have become if he had lived. Jessica was easier, her character already fixed at the age of eight. Loyal, resourceful, confident, annoying. Clever, too clever sometimes. Too clever Jar her own good, their father said but their mother said, That's impossible. Especially Jar agirl. Did they really say those things? Was she just making it up to fill in the gaps, the same way that she imagined (ludicrously, a daydream shared with no one) a Jessica living in the present, a parallel universe in the Cotswolds, in an old house with wisteria strung out along the front wall. Four children, a government adviser on Third World policies. Argumentative. Brave. Reliable. And her mother, living somewhere dazzling with sunshine, painting like a crazy woman, the eccentric English artist.

All made up, of course. She couldn't really remember any of them but that didn't stop them still possessing a reality that was stronger than anything alive, apart from the baby, of course. They were the touchstone to which everything else must look and the exemplar compared to which everything else failed. Except for the baby.

She was bereft, her whole life an act of bereavement, longing for something that she could no longer remember. Sometimes in the night, in dreams, she heard their old dog barking and it brought back a memory ofgrief so raw that it led her to wonder about killing the baby, and then herself, both of them slipping away on something as peaceful as poppies so that nothing hideous could ever happen to him. A contingency plan for when you were cornered, for when you couldn't run. A famine or a nuclear war. The volcano erupting, the comet dropping to earth. Ifshe was in a concentration camp. Or kidnapped by evil psychopaths. If there were no needles, if there was nothing, she would hold her hand over the baby's face and then she would hang herself. You could always find a way to hang yourself. Sometimes it took a lot of self-discipline. Elsie Marley's grown so Jine, she won't get up to Jeed the swine.

If she could she would run, she would run with the baby, she would run like the wind, until she was safe. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and held the baby closer. The bad man was commg.

Reggie Chase, Warrior Virgin SHE HAD PHONED CHIEF INSPECTOR MONROE THREE TIMES SO FAR and got no answer. When she phoned Dr Hunter's phone it no longer rang out, now a recorded voice on the other end informed Reggie that the number she was trying to reach was currently unavailable. Perhaps it had run out of battery, it must be ailing by now, if not dead. The slender thread that still connected Reggie to Dr Hunter was broken. Dr Hunter's lifeline. Reggie's too.

If Reggie could get her hands on Dr Hunter's phone, then the socalled aunt would be in her 'Contacts' list. She could phone the aunt and ask to speak to Dr Hunter. And then Dr Hunter would answer and Reggie would say -very casual -'Oh, hi, I just wanted to ask when you'd be back. Everything's fine here. Sadie sends her love.' And Dr Hunter would say, Thanks so much for phoning, Reggie. We're both missing you. And then all would be right with the world.

All she had to do was go into the house and find the phone. And if Mr Hunter came back she could always say that she'd left something behind, a book, a brush, a key. It wouldn't be like she was breaking in, technically speaking, you couldn't break in if you had a key, could you? She had to know that Dr Hunter was all right.

She got off the bus on Blackford Avenue and bought a packet of crisps in the Avenue Stores before setting out to walk the rest of the way to Dr Hunter's house. The crisps were cheese and onion flavour and as soon as she tasted them she had to put them away in her bag because they reminded her too much of the night of the train crash, breathing into Jackson Brodie's airless lungs, willing him into life.

There was no Range Rover which meant that Mr Hunter wasn't at home, as the two of them didn't go anywhere without each other. Reggie crouched down in the bushes and watched to make doubly sure that there was no sign of life in the house. Maybe she should have brought Billy along, for once his talents as a natural-born sneak would have come in useful. Billy wasn't answering his phone either. What was the point of phones if no one ever answered them?

Sadie gave a whine of homesickness at the sight of the house and Reggie stroked her ears comfortingly and said, 'I know, old girl. I know,' the way Dr Hunter would have done.

Searching for the Hunters' door keys, Reggie's fingers touched the bit of grubby blanket that was nestled in her pocket. A little green flag of distress left for her to interpret, a clue to be tracked, a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. How sad the baby must be to lose his talisman. How sad she was to lose the baby.

'Right,' she whispered to Sadie and the dog looked at her enquiringly. 'Let's do it.'

First the mortise, then the Yale, so far so good. In the hallway she paused for a second to check the coast was clear while Sadie raced up the stairs looking for Dr Hunter, although it was quite plain to Reggie that neither Dr Hunter nor the baby was here. The house was empty of breath, as quiet as the grave. Dead air. Even the clocks had stopped with no one here who cared to wind them. The absence of Dr Hunter from her own house weighed heavily on Reggie's heart.

The kitchen was messier now, although there was no sign of Mr Hunter having cooked anything. There were the remains of a pizza and a lot of dirty glasses that he hadn't bothered to put in the dishwasher. The fridge was still full of the same food that had been in there on Wednesday. The bananas in the truit bowl were black now and the apples were beginning to shrivel. There was a large cobweb slung across one corner of the ceiling. It was as if time was accelerating in Dr Hunter's absence. How long before the house reverted to some kind of primal state? Before it disappeared altogether and was replaced by field and forest.