She finished her drink. ‘That’s not an answer – what do you want?’

It was Adam’s turn to become self-conscious, using a napkin to wipe something non-existent from his face and replying almost apologetically: ‘I’ve already got everything I want.’

Jessica immersed herself in the food so that she didn’t have to respond, then changed the subject. She hated it when he said things like that because what was she supposed to say back?

The rest of the meal was terrific, the wine was smooth, the taxi drive back to the house was uneventful and the lights were off when they arrived home. Adam waved Jessica into the living room with a cheeky grin, asking if she fancied one more drink. Considering she planned, after seeing Adam off to work in the morning, to spend the rest of the day in bed, Jessica figured it couldn’t do much harm.

They giggled their way into the room like a pair of teenagers left on their own for the first time. Adam took a pair of shot glasses and half-full vodka bottle out of the cabinet underneath the television and poured them each a glass. They flopped on the sofa and toasted their first meal out alone together for months. Jessica enjoyed the burn of the liquid on her throat and reached for the bottle, pouring another. Adam shook his head: ‘I’ve got work tomorrow.’

Jessica didn’t let that stop her, downing the second shot in one and slumping even deeper into the cushions of the sofa.

‘Something’s different,’ Adam said, out of the blue.

‘What?’

‘I’m not sure – but something’s not quite right in here.’

Jessica poured – and drank – a third shot. Perhaps moving onto lates wasn’t a bad thing after all if it meant she had more evenings off in between times to hang around with Adam and go drinking. ‘I think you’ve had too much to drink,’ she said.

‘You’re the one slurring your words.’

‘Am not.’

Adam sounded as if he was about to say something but then he paused, biting his lip. ‘The candlesticks are missing.’

Jessica squinted towards the shelf they’d sat atop since they had partially unpacked but Adam was right – they had gone.

29

The alcohol helped Jessica sleep but Holden Wyatt, Damon Potter, Cassie Edmonds, Grace Savage, Bones, DCI Cole, Assistant Chief Constable Graham Pomeroy and strange curved symbols were haunting her.

Then there was Bex.

Jessica had checked through the gap between the door and the frame before she’d gone to bed but the teenager was in the same position she’d been in for the past few nights: curled into a ball under the bed covers, breathing deeply. Everything Adam had said at the restaurant was correct – but Jessica so wanted to help and knowing Bex had a roof over her head and food in her stomach was one of the few things that had got her through the week.

Although she knew she had to be up through the night, Jessica got up early and waited in the kitchen. She put some toast on for Adam, kissed him goodbye and then waited some more. She heard Bex moving around upstairs at twenty past nine and then the sound of the shower. Just before ten, the teenager emerged into the kitchen humming a song that Jessica didn’t know. Her long black hair was wet and loose, the damp ends creating a wet patch on the oversized T-shirt Adam had given her; the angular tattoo on her arm was bold and bright. Her slim legs hardly seemed to have the width to support the rest of her frame as she padded barefoot into the room, stopping when she noticed Jessica.

‘Oh, you’re up,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be sleeping most of the day.’

‘I probably will be. Do you want something to eat?’

Bex grinned, chewing on the corners of her mouth hungrily. ‘I shouldn’t keep eating your food.’

‘Maybe we should sit down one evening and have a talk about things?’

Jessica didn’t know how Bex would take it but the teenager nodded and grinned again. Her face had started to fill out slightly over the past few days, which was perhaps no surprise seeing as she couldn’t have got any thinner.

Jessica dropped a couple more slices of bread into the toaster and then started hunting through the cereal packets in the cupboard. That was the other thing about letting Adam do the food shopping by himself: he bought lots of cereal. If he could get away with eating it three times a day, he probably would.

Moments later and Bex was mashing a Shredded Wheat into a Weetabix while taking a bite of toast. Jessica took a strange pleasure in watching someone clearly so in need of food being able to wolf down the contents of her cupboards. That was until she felt self-conscious that she was turning into her mother. When Jessica had been a child, her mum constantly used to invite her primary school friends around after classes and then spend the evening trying to feed them as much as human beings could fit into themselves. Things hadn’t changed by the time Jessica took Adam home for the first time. Her mother had frowned in disapproval at his slender frame and then spent an hour finding out exactly which foods he liked so she could shove them down his gullet over the course of an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon. It must be a mumsy thing – and the fact that Jessica could happily keep making food for Bex, even though she rarely bothered to make anything for herself, was a worrying development.

That wasn’t the only worrying thing.

‘What did you get up to last night?’ Jessica asked.

Munch, munch, munch.

‘I had a walk to the end of your road and then carried on to the shops and back. It was nice to get some air but then it started getting cold again and I was convinced that I’d left the door unlocked. I’m not used to locking things.’

‘Had you?’

‘No, it’s one of those things where you know you’ve done something but your mind won’t switch off from it until you check. I sort of . . .’

Bex tailed off, delving into the mushy remains of her cereal and drawing her free hand across her chest protectively.

‘It’s okay.’

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

‘I’m a bit like that with my bag,’ Bex added. ‘It’s the only thing I have left from my mum’s house. All my clothes gradually became too big so I . . . got some more.’ She glanced away from the table guiltily. ‘I know how to pack it so that I can reach anything I need and then it has this sort of balance to it. But you end up getting paranoid if it doesn’t feel right. You think someone’s been nicking off you while you’ve been asleep, so you’re constantly on edge. Even though I know I’ve packed it right, I still get that urge to check it. I know it’s mad.’

Jessica knew it wasn’t. When you owned hardly anything, it made sense that you’d obsess over the things you did.

‘How long were you out for last night?’

Bex lifted the bowl and drank the dregs of the milk at the bottom. ‘I don’t know – an hour? Should I have stayed in?’

‘No, it’s not that, it’s just . . .’ To compound the fact that Jessica didn’t know which words to use, Bex took that moment to peer up from the table and smile at her. Whether she’d got her looks from her junkie mother or absent father, Bex really was naturally pretty, despite the slight hollowness she still had in her face. ‘. . . do you remember the candlesticks from the other room?’

‘You said they’d survived a fire.’

‘Right . . . it’s just they’re missing . . .’

Bex bit through the triangle of toast and then carefully put it back on the plate. She kept her eyes fixed on Jessica as she chewed, saying nothing. Jessica tried to read her face, her posture, anything; but there was only a darkness that hadn’t been there before. Suddenly Jessica saw the Bex she didn’t know – the street Bex, the girl who’d seen and survived things as a fourteen-year-old that Jessica didn’t even want to guess about. Her pointed shoulders had angled forward, pressing into the material of the T-shirt, her eyebrows had turned into a V, with vertical crease lines in the centre of her forehead.