Jess tried to smile. ‘Mr Nicholls. That sounds suspiciously like optimism.’

He turned to her and his eyes were full of sympathy.

She was relieved to be back in his car. She had begun to feel oddly safe there, like nothing really bad could happen while they were all inside it. She tried to imagine the reception they would get from Marty’s mother, especially once the older woman discovered they were all going to have to stay with her overnight. Jess pictured being in the front room of Costanza’s little house, trying to explain the events that had led them there. She pictured Marty’s face when she told him about the Rolls-Royce. She saw them all waiting at a bus stop tomorrow, the first stage in an interminable journey home. She wondered briefly whether she could ask Mr Nicholls to mind Norman till they got back. Thinking about this made her remember how much this whole escapade had cost, and she pushed the thought away. One thing at a time.

And then she must have nodded off, because someone had hold of her arm.

‘Jess?’

‘Nngh?’

‘Jess? I think we’re here. That satnav says this is her address. Does this look right to you?’

She pushed herself upright, un-cricking her neck. The windows of the neat, white terraced house gazed unblinking back at her. Her stomach lurched reflexively.

‘What’s the time?’

‘Just before seven.’ He waited while she rubbed her eyes. ‘Well, the lights are on,’ he said. ‘I’m guessing they’re home.’

He turned in his seat as she pushed herself upright. ‘Hey, kids, we’re here. Time to see your dad.’

Tanzie’s hand gripped Jess’s tightly as they walked up the path. Nicky had refused to get out of the car, saying he’d wait with Mr Nicholls. Jess decided she’d let Tanzie go in before she went back and tried to reason with him.

‘Are you excited?’

Tanzie nodded, her little face suddenly hopeful and, just briefly, Jess sensed that she had done the right thing. They would salvage something out of this trip, if it killed her. Whatever issues she and Marty had could be sorted out later. They paused to gaze at the peach-coloured rosebush that sat halfway along the path, placed, Jess always thought, to snag the unwary. Two new small barrels sat by the front steps, filled with a purple flower she didn’t recognize. She straightened her jacket, smoothed the hair from Tanzie’s face, leant forward and wiped a bit of something from the corner of her mouth, and then she rang the doorbell.

Maria Costanza saw Tanzie first. She gazed at her, and then up at Jess, and several expressions, none quite identifiable, flickered rapidly across her face.

Jess answered them with her cheeriest smile. ‘Hey, Maria. We, um, were in the area, and I just thought we couldn’t pass without seeing Marty. And you.’

Maria Costanza stared at her.

‘We did try to call,’ Jess continued, her voice a sing-song, and odd to her ears. ‘Quite a few times. I would have left a message but …’

‘Hi, Granny.’ Tanzie ran forwards and threw herself at her grandmother’s waist. Maria Costanza’s hand went down and she let it rest limply against Tanzie’s back. She had dyed her hair a shade too dark, Jess noted absently. Maria Costanza stayed like that for a moment, then glanced at the car, where Nicky stared out impassively from the rear window.

God, would it kill you to express some enthusiasm, just once? Jess thought. ‘Nicky will be over in a minute,’ she said, keeping the smile firmly on her face. ‘He’s just woken up. I’m … giving him a moment.’

They stood and faced each other, waiting.

‘So …’ Jess said, when she didn’t speak, and peered past the older woman down the hall.

‘He – he’s not here,’ Maria Costanza said.

‘Is he at work?’ She had sounded more eager than she had intended. ‘I mean, it’s lovely if he’s feeling … well enough to work.’

‘He’s not here, Jessica.’

‘Is he ill?’ Oh, Christ, she thought. Something’s happened. And then she saw it. An emotion she was not sure she’d ever seen on Maria Costanza’s features. Embarrassment.

Jess watched her attempt to cover it. She glanced behind her, folded her arms.

‘So where is he?’

‘You … I think you should talk to him.’ Maria Costanza brought a hand to her mouth, as if to prevent herself saying more, then extricated herself gently from her grandchild. ‘Hold on. I’ll get you his address.’

‘His address?’

She left Tanzie and Jess standing on the doorstep, and disappeared down the little hallway, half closing the door behind her. Tanzie looked up quizzically. Jess smiled reassuringly. It wasn’t quite as easy as it had been.

The door opened again. She handed over a piece of paper. ‘It will take you maybe one hour, maybe an hour and a half, depending on the traffic.’ Jess registered her stiff features, then looked past her to the little hallway, where nothing had changed in the fifteen years she had known her. Nothing at all. And somewhere in the back of Jess’s head a little bell began to chime.

‘Right,’ she said, and she wasn’t smiling any more.

Maria Costanza couldn’t hold her gaze. She stooped then, and put her palm against Tanzie’s cheek. ‘You come back and stay with your nonna soon, yes?’ She looked up at Jess. ‘You bring her back? It’s been a long time.’

That look of mute appeal, of acknowledgement in her duplicity, was more unnerving than almost anything she had ever done in the years of their relationship.

Jess swept Tanzie towards the car.

Mr Nicholls looked up. He didn’t say anything.

‘Here.’ Jess handed him the paper. ‘We need to go here.’ Wordlessly he began to program the postcode into the satnav. Her heart was thumping.

She looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘You knew,’ she said, when Tanzie finally put her earphones in.

Nicky pulled at his fringe, gazing out at his grandmother’s house. ‘It was the last few times we’ve spoken to him on Skype. Granny would never have had that wallpaper.’

She didn’t ask him where Marty was. She thought she probably had an idea, even then.

They drove the hour in silence. Jess wanted to be reassuring, but she couldn’t speak. A million possibilities ran through her head. Occasionally she looked into the mirror, watching Nicky. His face was closed, turned resolutely towards the roadside. She began slowly to reconsider his reluctance to come here, even to speak to his father these last few months, casting it in a new light.

They drove through the dusky countryside to the outskirts of a new town and an estate where the houses were box fresh, laid out in careful, sweeping curves, and new cars gleamed outside like statements of intent. Mr Nicholls pulled up in Castle Court, where four cherry trees stood like sentinels along the narrow pavement upon which she suspected nobody ever walked. The house was newly built; its Regency-style windows gleamed, its slate roof shone in the drizzle.

She stared at it out of the window.

‘You okay?’ They were the only two words Mr Nicholls had spoken the entire journey.

‘You wait here a minute, kids,’ Jess said, and climbed out.

She walked up to the front door, double-checked the address on the piece of paper, then rapped on the brass knocker. Inside she could hear the sound of a television, saw the vague shadow of someone moving under bright light.

She knocked again. She barely felt the rain.

Footsteps in the hallway. The door opened and a blonde woman stood in front of her. She wore a dark red wool dress and court shoes, and her hair was cut in one of those styles that women wear when they work in retail or banking but don’t want to look like they’ve entirely given up on the idea of being a rock chick.

‘Is Marty there?’ Jess said. The woman made as if to speak, then looked Jess up and down, at her flip-flops, at her crumpled white trousers, and in the several seconds that followed, the faint hardening of her expression, Jess could see she knew. She knew about her.

‘Wait there,’ she said.

The door half closed, and Jess heard her shout down the narrow corridor. ‘Mart? Mart?’

Mart.

She heard his voice, muffled, laughing, saying something about television, and then her voice dropped. She saw their shadows behind the frosted-glass panels. And then the door opened and he stood there.

Marty had grown his hair. He had a long, floppy fringe, swept carefully to one side like a teenager. He wore jeans she didn’t recognize, in deep indigo, and he had lost weight. He looked like someone she didn’t know. And he had gone quite, quite pale. ‘Jess.’

She couldn’t speak.

They stared at each other. He swallowed. ‘I was going to tell you.’

Right up to that point a part of her had refused to believe it could be true. Right up to that point she had thought there must be some huge mistake, that Marty was staying with a friend or he was ill again and Maria Costanza, with her misplaced pride, just couldn’t face admitting it. But there was no mistaking what was right in front of her.

It took her several seconds to find her voice. ‘This? This is … where you’ve been living?’

She stumbled backwards, now taking in the immaculate front garden, the new three-piece suite, just visible through the window. Her hip bumped against a car on the drive and she put out her hand, to support herself, pulling it away as if burnt when she realized what it was. ‘All this time? We’ve been scratching around for the last two years just to stay warm and fed and you’re here with an executive home and a – a brand-new Toyota?’

Marty glanced awkwardly behind him. ‘We need to talk, Jess.’

And then she saw the wallpaper in his dining room. The thick stripe. And it all fell into place. His insistence that they only speak at set times. The lack of a landline phone number. Maria Costanza’s assurance that he was sleeping whenever she rang outside the usual time. Her determination to get Jess off the telephone as quickly as possible.