Deep Waters E-Book

Kate Charles

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Callie Anson
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 519

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

In a society obsessed with celebrities, baby Muffin's death is big news. Was it cot death, or something more sinister? Everyone wants to know - including the police. The bereaved parents, celebrity couple Jodee and Chazz, live in curate Callie Anson's parish, and Callie becomes involved with the funeral arrangements in spite of the disapproval of the vicar and his wife. Detective Inspector Neville Stewart is called away from his honeymoon to investigate the case, with disastrous personal results, and journalist Lilith Noone's professional future is put on the line when she becomes embroiled in a dangerous flirtation with celebrity culture. Meanwhile, for police family liason officer Mark Lombardi, the death of baby Muffin is eclipsed by another fatality, much closer to home. He finds himself in an impossible position, torn between loyalty to his family and a growing love of Callie. Engaging and gripping, Deep Waters sets up a powerful momentum that keeps the pages turning until the end.

Leseprobe

Deep Waters

Kate Charles

For my dearest Rory—thirty-five years and counting

Contents

Title PageDedicationAcknowledgmentsChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyAbout the AuthorBooks by Kate CharlesCopyright

Acknowledgments

Grateful thanks are due to numerous people:

Deborah Crombie, Marcia Talley and Suzanne Clackson, for editorial advice and creative input.

HM Coroner Dr. William Dolman, Dr. James Cullen, the Rev. Sharon Jones, the Rev. Ann Barge, the Rev. Mary-Lou Toop, the Rev. Sylvia Turner, for technical expertise and information.

Westcott House and Dyffryn Farm, for creative spaces.

Kat, Paula and Louise, for Jodee’s hair.

Chapter One

About three o’clock on a March morning, Callie Anson thought the world must be coming to an end. It was the wind that woke her, slamming against the sash window of the bedroom as though it was trying to break and enter. Above her head the roof timbers creaked and groaned, then came the sound of a sliding slate, followed by a crash.

Callie was torn between the temptation to get out of bed to look out of the window and the urge to pull the duvet over her head and pretend it wasn’t happening. Cowardice won out over curiosity, aided by the common-sense realisation that it was dark outside and she wouldn’t be able to see much anyway.

Then there was a scratching sound at the bedroom door, frantic and persistent.

‘Oh, Bella!’ In an instant Callie was out of bed, opening the door to admit a black and white cocker spaniel. ‘Come on, girl. You must be terrified.’ She scooped the trembling dog up in her arms and carried her to the bed. ‘It’s okay,’ she soothed, getting back under the duvet and stroking Bella’s soft ears. ‘I won’t let it hurt you.’

As another slate and then two more crashed to the ground, Callie wished she felt as confident as she sounded. But then, that was pretty much the story of her life.

‘I don’t know.’ The young man shook his head as he surveyed the wreckage which surrounded the church hall: smashed slates and broken branches. He tipped his head back and squinted towards the roof. ‘Yer’ve lost a fair few of them slates, see? And it’s too high up for a ladder. Goner need scaffolding, innit?’

‘Scaffolding!’ That, reflected Callie, sounded serious. And expensive.

‘It’ll cost yer,’ he echoed her thoughts. ‘Got insurance, have yer?’

‘Oh, the church has insurance.’

The young man gave her a suspicious look. ‘Yer live in a church?’

‘This is the church hall—I live upstairs. The church is over there.’ Callie pointed towards the nearby Victorian edifice, its roof miraculously intact. That, at least, was a blessing. The churchyard was going to need some clean-up, with all of those branches down, but it appeared that the building itself hadn’t sustained any significant damage.

Likewise the vicarage, standing stolidly next door. No, the church hall had taken the brunt of the storm, and once it had lost one roof slate, a whole army of its fellows had followed.

The wind, though it had lost the edge of its savagery, was still blowing in frigid gusts. Callie shivered, while the young man crossed his arms across his chest and tucked his hands in his armpits. ‘Any chance of a cuppa?’ he suggested hopefully.

‘Of course.’

That she could manage: dispensing cups of tea was one of her specialities, rain or shine. It was something curates, if they were at all clever, mastered in the first week of their job.

Callie led the way up the stairs to her flat. Ignoring the fancy hot drinks machine her brother had bought her, she filled the kettle and switched it on. Some good sturdy PG Tips was what was needed here, not poncy cappuccino or espresso.

She brought two mugs back into the sitting room to find that the young man had shed his donkey jacket and was on the sofa, stroking Bella. Above his faded jeans he wore a t-shirt which revealed a surprisingly thin, wiry physique. His skinny upper arms were encircled with some sort of tattoos, like celtic torc armbands. ‘Nice dog,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’ Callie smiled. ‘She’s called Bella.’

‘I’m Derek, by the way. Derek Long.’

‘Callie Anson.’ She put one of the mugs on the table in front of him. ‘Three sugars, like you said.’

‘Brilliant.’

How, she wondered, could he be so thin if he took three sugars in his tea? And what about his teeth? What she’d seen of them didn’t look particularly attractive; her own teeth hurt, just thinking about it.

Derek picked up the mug, blew on its steaming surface, then took a gulp. ‘Perfec,’ he pronounced.

She drank her own tea, feeling she needed the warmth and comfort it provided after her foray outside.

‘Can I ask yer a question?’ Derek was looking at her over the rim of his mug. Looking, she perceived, in the vicinity of her clerical collar.

‘Of course.’

‘Are yer a vicar?’

Callie smiled. ‘No, not exactly. I’m a curate.’

‘What’s that, then?’

Ah, she thought, the mysteries of the Church of England hierarchy. How could she explain it without boring this young man to tears? Bishops, archdeacons, deans, canons, vicars, rectors: even the faithful weren’t always clear what it all meant. ‘I suppose a curate is sort of like a junior vicar,’ she said. ‘The vicar—Brian—is my boss.’

‘Curate sounds more like a junior doctor.’ He grinned.

Callie laughed. ‘I suppose it does.’

‘So y’re like…religious? Or somefink like that?’

How was she supposed to answer? She thought about it for a moment, then said carefully, ‘Well, I work for the Church. I believe in God, if that’s what you mean.’

Derek Long shook his head. ‘The Church,’ he said. ‘I don’t get it. I mean, like, y’re not bad lookink. If yer don’t mind me sayin’. Why would yer waste yer life on the bloomin’ Church?’

She turned the question back on him. ‘You’re not a church-goer, then?’

‘Me? Nah.’ Again he shook his head. ‘I mean, like, why would I go to bloomin’ church? On a Sunday mornink? Not bloody likely. Not after I been down the pub on a Saturday night, like. I’m not goink nowhere on Sunday mornink.’

And this conversation wasn’t going anywhere either, Callie decided. She didn’t want to come across as prim and pious, and she knew that nothing she said would persuade this young man that church had anything to offer him. So she sipped her tea for a moment, then changed the subject. ‘About the roof,’ she said. ‘It’s bad?’

‘It’s bad, all right,’ Derek replied promptly. ‘To be honest, like, I fink it’s past mendin’.’

‘Past mending?’ That sounded alarming. ‘You mean you can’t fix it?’

Derek ran a hand over his head—which wasn’t quite shaved, but cropped very close to the scalp. ‘Best to have a new roof.’

Well, Callie told herself philosophically, the insurance would take care of it. Brian would moan about all the paperwork, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘Will you be able to do it right away?’ she asked. ‘Or as soon as we can sort out the insurance?’

He shook his head. ‘Not a chance.’

‘But—’

‘There’s a waitink list, like. For the scaffolding, innit?’

Callie fortified herself with a gulp of tea. ‘Then how soon?’

‘Month. Six weeks, mebbe. Two months, outside.’

Two months! Callie envisioned the spring rains which were yet to come and remembered the gaping holes in the roof above her head. ‘Can you do something temporary? Put some plastic over the holes so the rain doesn’t come in?’

Derek fondled Bella’s ears. ‘Yeah. I can, like, use some polyfene sheetink. But,’ he added, as if it were an insignificant detail, ‘yer won’t be able to live here.’

Not be able to live in her flat—for up to two months? Callie sank back in her chair. ‘But…but…where am I supposed to live?’

Derek Long shrugged.

Where on earth was she going to live? Even if the insurance would pay for it, which seemed unlikely, Callie couldn’t just go off and live in a hotel for two months. She had a dog, for one thing. And she needed to be in, or at least close to, the parish. Close to the church.

She’d better talk to Brian, and soon. Maybe he would know of a parishioner with an empty flat, or someone with a spare room who wouldn’t mind a well-behaved dog—not to mention a well-behaved curate—moving in.

Jane Stanford was feeling a bit out of sorts. It wasn’t anything she could put her finger on, but she just wasn’t at her best. She’d spent the morning at the ironing board, which she usually didn’t mind at all; on this occasion, though, her lower back ached.

A possible symptom of pregnancy, Jane was aware. If only. But Jane knew that—in spite of her efforts—she wasn’t pregnant. She’d used one of her supply of testing kits just a few days ago, and the results were negative. Again. Not this month. Maybe soon, but not yet.

A baby girl—that was what she wanted. She’d wanted it for a very long time, since not long after she’d given birth to twin boys over eighteen years before, but the hard facts of vicarage budgeting had meant that it was out of the question to have another baby. Out of the question until just a few months ago, when an unexpected legacy had given their finances a boost, and Jane had confided her long-deferred hopes to Brian, hoping it wasn’t too late.

She was, she hated to admit to herself, on the wrong side of forty, when conception could by no means be taken for granted. When she’d had the twins, all those years ago, it had been so easy. Now she was doing everything it said in the book—charting her temperature to pinpoint the moment of ovulation, taking lots of vitamin supplements, even losing a bit of weight—yet nothing had happened.

Jane straightened up, arching her shoulders to ease the strain. Perhaps, she told herself, the back ache was because she hadn’t slept very well. There had been a tremendous storm in the night, battering the vicarage windows with a frightening savagery. Brian, bless him, had managed to sleep through it, but Jane hadn’t been so lucky. She’d lain awake for what seemed like hours, hoping the walls and roof would withstand the onslaught.

And while Jane was ironing, transforming crumpled lumps of white fabric into crisp, snowy surplice and alb, Brian had spent much of the morning in his study with his curate, Callie Anson.

There was something about Callie Anson that got on Jane’s nerves. She admitted it to herself, though she wasn’t sure why it was so. In theory, Jane didn’t have any strong objections to women in the clergy, nor could she come up with any valid theological arguments against women’s ordination. She didn’t really think that Callie had designs on Brian or would ever, consciously or unconsciously, inflict damage on their marriage. Callie wasn’t rude or patronising to Jane as ‘just the vicar’s wife’; on the contrary, she was always pleasant and polite. She was a perfectly acceptable young woman, attractive and bright and hard-working. Jane just…didn’t like her.

She’d tried very hard to keep her feelings about Callie from Brian. After all, she knew how irrational they were, and she didn’t want Brian to think she was some sort of jealous shrew. Still, she wasn’t sure how successful she’d been until that day at lunch-time.

Lunch was vegetable soup, made with the dregs from the vegetable drawer of the fridge and a few sprouty potatoes she’d found at the back of the larder. Still, Brian ate it without complaint, and while eating he dropped his bomb-shell.

‘The church hall really took a hit from that storm last night,’ he said. ‘I suppose we were quite lucky that the church and the vicarage weren’t damaged as well.’

‘Damaged?’

‘The roof,’ said Brian. ‘Lost quite a few slates. Apparently the whole roof will have to be replaced. It’s not even safe for habitation. The roofing chap told Callie she’ll have to move out.’

Jane didn’t have a premonition of what was coming. ‘Oh, poor Callie,’ she said with as much sincerity as she could muster.

‘I told her she could stay here at the vicarage,’ said Brian. ‘Just for a month or two. You don’t mind, do you, Janey?’

A month. Or two. Jane stared at her husband as though he’d taken leave of his senses. Which, it would seem, he had done.

‘We have all this space here, especially with the boys away,’ he went on. ‘The guest room is made up, isn’t it? Callie won’t be any trouble.’

‘But she has a dog.’

Brian shrugged. ‘Oh, that won’t be a problem. Bella’s a quiet little thing, and we have a big garden. It’s not as if you’re allergic to dogs.’

Allergic to dogs. That was hardly the point. ‘But…isn’t there anywhere else she can go?’ Jane managed. ‘An hotel?

‘You said it yourself, Janey,’ Brian said with infuriating patience. ‘She has a dog. She can’t stay in an hotel with a dog.’

‘How about her mother’s?’

He shook his head. ‘Her mother lives in Kensington. Callie needs to be in the parish.’

‘Surely there are people in the parish…’ Jane looked down into her soup bowl, struggling to keep her voice even. ‘Can’t you ask round, Brian? I can think of several people. Elderly ladies on their own in big houses, like Mildred Channing, or Hilary Dalton?’

He raised his eyebrows and gave her a quizzical look. ‘I’d almost think you didn’t want her here, Janey. This is the logical place for her to stay. You must see that.’

Jane swallowed hard. She had one last argument in her arsenal and now was the time to bring it out. ‘What about the… the money?’

‘Money? What do you mean?’

Of course, thought Jane, Brian never worried about little things like money. It was up to her—and always had been—to eke out his stipend till the end of each month, to pay the bills and put food on the table. ‘Her meals,’ Jane said baldly. ‘Am I expected to feed her out of my housekeeping money?’

Brian grinned, clearly pleased with himself. ‘This is the best thing about it, Janey. I rang the EIO. The insurance company. They’ll pay to put Callie’s belongings in store. And they’ll pay us. There will be a weekly cheque coming in for her accommodation!’

That, realised Jane, was it. She may as well give up and accept it.

The storm had passed, bringing behind it unseasonably warm temperatures and sunshine. It was, in short, too nice a day for Mark Lombardi to eat his lunch in the police station canteen. Instead he picked up a sandwich and headed for his favourite green space.

Newcomers to London were always surprised at how much green space was to be found in the nation’s capitol city. Mark, as a London native, took for granted the vast expanses of Hyde Park, to the south of the station, Regents Park, to the north-east, and the more modest Paddington Green, round the corner. But there were smaller green spaces as well, tucked away in unexpected places—tiny squares, little parks, churchyards. Some time ago Mark had discovered one of the latter just a short walk from the station: a secluded churchyard with a bench where he could sit and eat his sandwich in peace and feel a million miles away from the bustle of London.

And sitting in a churchyard, even if it wasn’t her churchyard, somehow made him feel closer to Callie: more a part of the world she lived in. Thinking about Callie, imagining what she was doing at any given moment, was something Mark did a great deal of these days, wherever he was.

If anyone had told Mark Lombardi, six months ago, how much his life could change in half a year, he wouldn’t really have believed them.

All it had taken was that trip to Venice to visit his grandmother. On the way back to London, he’d been seated next to an engaging young woman with shiny brown bobbed hair, and they’d talked for the entire flight as if they’d known each other for years. That’s how it had started; by the time they’d landed he knew that he wanted to see Callie Anson again. And again and again.

Mark wondered, not for the first time, about the vagaries of fate. What if the woman at the airline check-in had assigned him a different seat that day? What if Callie hadn’t commented on the Italian newspaper he was reading, and drawn him into conversation? So many variables…And yet there was such an inevitability about it, looking at it from the perspective of the present. Here, now, sitting in this churchyard, he could not imagine his life without Callie in it. She was woven into the fabric of his thoughts, day and night; they saw each other most evenings, and in between they spoke on the phone. She was even—miracle of miracles—accepted by la famigilia Lombardi, that formidable institution which pretty much governed his life.

He still couldn’t believe that Mamma liked Callie. He’d been so prepared for the opposite that he’d delayed their meeting for months. After all, he had been programmed for his entire thirty-one years to bring home a nice Italian girl, with all that implied. And Callie wasn’t just an Anglo: she was an Anglican. An Anglican in Holy Orders, at that.

To Mark’s astonishment, Mamma had taken it all in her stride. Callie had won her over without even trying. And where Mamma led, Pappa followed. Pappa thought Callie was wonderful.

It was a mystery.

Mark took a bite out of his cheese and pickle sandwich and looked at the clump of daffodils near the church porch. They were a bit battered in the wake of the storm, but still held their yellow heads upright.

Rather like his sister Serena, he thought. The events of the last few months had been horrendous for her. Yet she had carried on, head held high, as if nothing had changed. Mamma and Pappa hadn’t known—hadn’t even suspected—that she was heartbroken, bearing the burden of her husband Joe’s infidelity.

She had—in the throes of her anguish—confided in Mark. It had shaken him pretty badly as well. He had known Joe di Stefano for most of his life, and his sister’s marriage had always seemed rock-solid to him, the exemplar of all that marriage should be.

Marriage. That brought Mark’s thoughts round to his good friend Neville—Detective Inspector Neville Stewart.

If Mark’s life had changed in six months, Neville’s had altered beyond recognition. From being a confirmed and carefree bachelor, he had transformed into a married man. And it had been even more of a shock to Mark than it had to Neville.

Neville had played his cards so close to his chest that Mark had had no idea what was going on. Yes, he knew that Neville was seeing someone, early on when Mark himself was getting to know Callie. But his absorption with his own new relationship had blunted his curiosity, and within a few weeks Neville had told him, in his taciturn way, that things were over between himself and Triona. Neville had never been comfortable talking about emotions, about things of the heart; he often kidded Mark about his Mediterranean temperament, wearing his heart on his sleeve.

Suddenly, then, just before Christmas: an engagement. Neville had told him over a drink at their favourite pub. ‘Seems I’m getting married,’ he’d said casually, halfway through his first pint of Guinness.

Mark could only stare at him. ‘Married? But who to?’

‘Triona O’Neil. Will you be my best man?’

‘I’d be honoured. But…’

Eventually he’d pried it out of Neville. He and Triona had lived together for a few months, some years earlier. Their break-up had been painful; Neville had really never got over her. Then they met again by chance, were drawn together briefly, and split again.

‘But I finally realised,’ Neville said, looking down into his Guinness, ‘that I didn’t want to live without her. It was like…a lightbulb going on over my thick head. Difficult as it is to be with her, being without her is worse. Much worse.’

He had proposed to her, he confessed, at the top of the London Eye. He’d done it properly, going down on his knees.

‘And she said yes?’ Mark surmised.

She’d said yes—or at least maybe, at that point. And that wasn’t all she’d said.

‘I’m going to be a dad,’ Neville told him, pulling a bemused face.

Triona had broken the news to him immediately after her provisional acceptance of his proposal: the one time they’d slept together, there had been consequences which neither of them had expected. She’d known about it for weeks but hadn’t been planning to tell him.

‘It’s not like I wouldn’t have figured it out eventually,’ Neville said wryly. ‘But she didn’t want me to feel like I had to marry her. Even after I proposed, and she told me about the baby, she said that if it made any difference to the way I felt, then we’d call it off there and then.’

Mark raised his eyebrows. ‘And how do you feel about it?’

There was a long pause while Neville emptied his glass. ‘It scares the crap out of me,’ he said frankly. ‘I just never thought… I never really thought about having kids. I know that sounds stupid. But it’s like…being old or something. A wife is one thing. But a kid?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m still getting my head round it, to tell you the truth.’

That sounded a bit worrisome to Mark. ‘You need to be sure,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t marry her if you’re not sure—about the whole package.’

‘That’s what Triona said.’ Neville stood up, ready to go to the bar to get the next round. ‘So we’re not rushing into anything. We’re going to wait a couple of months, to give me time to get used to the idea. But I am going to marry her, mate,’ he added firmly. ‘So you can start working on your speech now.’

The wedding had taken place the previous weekend, and now Neville was on his honeymoon. Mark thought about it as he finished his sandwich.

It had been a small wedding, held at a posh hotel in the City. Neville had cleaned up well, looking positively handsome in his hired dinner jacket. And Triona, her bump unabashedly visible beneath her gown of clingy, creamy bias-cut satin, was a radiant bride. The guest list was limited to a few friends on either side: Triona’s solicitor pals, and Neville’s police colleagues. Mark was best man, and Callie’s great friend Frances Cherry was Triona’s attendant.

No family—not on either side. That seemed the strangest thing of all to Mark. He couldn’t imagine a wedding without family. If it had been his wedding, it would have been awash with them, streaming in from near and far. Nonna—his grandmother—would have come from Venice, and no doubt other Italian relations as well.

Nonetheless the wedding had moved Mark deeply. As the couple said their vows he watched Neville’s face, and his friend looked as if he’d won the lottery and inherited a brewery on the same day. And Triona, when the ring was slipped on her finger, glowed with a transcendent beauty which was partly to do with motherhood and all to do with love.

It made Mark want to rush to Callie’s side, throw himself at her feet, and beg her to marry him. During the wedding breakfast, as she sat beside him looking as lovely as he’d ever seen her, the urge was powerful.

So why hadn’t he done it?

Mark still wasn’t entirely sure. It was partly to do with a failure of imagination. Their wedding: what would it be like? Yes, there would be family there, in abundance. But that in itself would be an issue rife with possibilities for problems. His ardently Roman Catholic family would take a dim view of a wedding held in an Anglican church. Yet that wasn’t just a possibility—it was a certainty. Callie was an ordained clergywoman, within a few months of being a priest. It was who she was, not a mere religious preference. Her wedding should by rights take place in her own church. What would his family make of that?

Even more than that, though, he had been constrained by something Serena had said to him on the evening he’d introduced Callie to the family, just before Christmas. He and his sister had had a heart-to-heart talk in the kitchen over the washing-up.

‘What do you think?’ Mark had asked her; he knew that she knew the answer he wanted.

‘She’s lovely,’ said Serena. ‘Very nice, Marco.’ If her voice conveyed a bit less enthusiasm than her words, at least the words were the right ones.

‘I really love her,’ he confided. He wouldn’t have told his mother that, but he felt comfortable saying it to Serena.

‘You haven’t…?’

‘Asked her to marry me? Not yet,’ Mark admitted. ‘I’m working up to it, though.’

Serena didn’t look at him, but she laid a damp hand on his sleeve. ‘Don’t rush into anything,’ she said in a flat voice. ‘I mean it, Marco. You may think she’s the one, the right person—’

‘She is,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m sure of it. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.’

‘Give it time,’ Serena said. ‘If she’s the right one, you won’t lose anything by waiting. And if not…well, it’s better to find that out before you commit yourself.’ She swallowed. ‘You think you know someone, but it takes time. Lots of time.’

Mark realised she was talking about Joe, was talking out of her own pain. He shouldn’t have expected her to be over the moon about his happiness with Callie.

And yet…there was something in what Serena said. If it was right, then what was the rush? Callie wasn’t going anywhere, and as his feelings for her—their feelings for each other—deepened even further, there would come a time when the next step would present itself as inevitable.

Mark’s churchyard reverie was interrupted by the jangling of his phone. Callie.

‘Cara mia,’ he greeted her, a smile in his voice.

‘I just wanted to let you know, Marco. There’s a change of plan for this evening.’

‘Well, Bella,’ said Callie. ‘I suppose this is it.’ Home, for the next few weeks.

Home. If you could call it that. Callie looked round the room, trying hard to find something homely about it.

It wasn’t a small room: that was one thing in its favour. High ceiling, plenty of floor space. The high ceiling, though, meant that there was all the more of the drab, depressing wallpaper on view. And as for the floor space…

The floor was covered with not one but two patterned carpets, joining somewhere near the wardrobe. The carpets were equally threadbare, equally hideous—one a bilious shade of green, with large swirls of a darker green, and the other a floral design, featuring overblown pink roses on a dreary grey background. The Stanfords’ last vicarage must have had smaller rooms, Callie guessed, with none of its carpets large enough to make the transition to this current Victorian monstrosity. Either of those carpets would have been ugly enough on their own; together they were truly sick-making.

Unsurprisingly, none of the furniture matched either. There was a frameless double bed, covered with a dingy white candlewick spread, a dark oak wardrobe, a lighter oak chest of drawers, and a pine bedside table. Blessedly there was also a wash basin attached to the wall in the corner, its pipe-work concealed by a frilled and gathered skirt.

Callie looked at the books on the bedside table. Thoughtfully provided? On the whole, she doubted it: they seemed a random collection of old paperback novels—from some long-ago church jumble sale, or left behind by previous guests—mingled with an assortment of other tomes. There was a cookery book, a chemistry text book, and a battered children’s picture book. She was glad she’d thought to bring along her own reading material.

Unfortunately, though, there was no reading lamp on the bedside table. The room’s only illumination came from the window, and above—from the single dim bulb dangling from the middle of the ceiling, shrouded in an ugly fringed shade. Evidently people were not meant to read in this room.

Bella jumped up on the bed and flopped down, seemingly impervious to her depressing surroundings.

‘Oh, Bella,’ Callie said. She realised she should probably get the dog off of the candlewick bedspread, but she didn’t have the heart. Instead she sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Bella’s ears.

What had she done? What had she committed herself—and Bella—to?

She hadn’t had many other options, and when Brian had suggested it, she’d overcome her reservations about living under Jane’s roof for maybe two months, and had accepted his offer.

At least, she told herself philosophically, the new arrangements would put on hold the fraught question of sleeping with Mark Lombardi. It certainly wasn’t going to happen here, at All Saints’ vicarage. And maybe that was no bad thing, to remove that particular issue from the equation for a while.

Chapter Two

For once in his miserable life, Neville Stewart counted himself a happy man. A contented one, even.

He was, after all, on his honeymoon. In Spain, where the sun shone every day instead of maybe once a fortnight. With the woman he adored and had finally realised he didn’t want to live without.

She was next to him now, in a large and comfortable bed, sleeping soundly in the early hours of a Spanish morning.

Neville himself was awake. They’d spent so much of the last week in bed that he seemed to have caught up with his chronic sleep deficit. Maybe, he thought, that was one reason why he felt so good. The honeymoon hadn’t just been about sun, sea and sex—though there had been plenty of those, and not necessarily in that order. Sleep had also been on the menu, along with all the wonderful food they’d consumed.

Triona seemed to need even more sleep than he did—probably because of the pregnancy.

Neville played with a strand of Triona’s long black hair, twisting a curl round his finger. Triona, in her everyday life as a staid solicitor, usually tamed her hair by wearing it scraped into a knot at the back of her neck, but on honeymoon she’d not bothered, letting it go wild much of the time and otherwise just pulling it back with a scrunchie or piling it on top of her head. He’d always loved her hair, which seemed to him to have a life of its own. When he’d first known her, when they’d first been lovers so many years ago, she’d kept it short and curly. It had been sexy then; now it was erotic in the extreme.

As was everything else about her. Whatever else he may have thought about her unexpected pregnancy—whatever his unspoken and unexplored ambivalence about becoming a father—Neville found the changes in Triona’s body deeply, irresistibly erotic. The gentle swell of her belly, the astonishing enlargement of her breasts: he couldn’t get enough of her. And the hormones of pregnancy meant that she was equally hungry for him.

They’d been on honeymoon for nearly a week, with just over a week to go. In ten days he’d have to be back at his desk, and Triona would return to her office in the City, continuing to work until it was time to go on maternity leave.

Living…where? That was the one fraught question. Neville had his grotty flat in Shepherds Bush, where he’d been for years; it had been good enough for Triona once, but it certainly wouldn’t do for her now. Her posh City pad was tiny, really only suitable for the workaholic singleton she had been until a few months ago.

Triona wanted to find a house—a family house. That, in Neville’s mind, meant the suburbs. He couldn’t imagine himself stuck in the suburbs, with a long commute into work. And London was so damnably expensive these days that it would have to be quite a way out. Even with Triona’s respectable salary they couldn’t afford anything very convenient.

But it would have to be done. The baby would be there before the end of summer.

Neville ran his hand over Triona’s tummy and she stirred in her sleep. ‘Hey,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘Are you awake?’

Her eyes, heavy-lidded, opened just a slit. ‘No, I’m not.’ Triona pushed his hand away. ‘Let me sleep, okay?’

He supposed he could wait. They weren’t going anywhere, and she was certainly worth waiting for. Maybe he’d go back to sleep himself for a bit.

The question of sleep, though, suddenly became academic. Neville’s mobile phone, on the bedside table, bleated out a few notes in a minor key which told him before he even looked at it that the call was from work.

Unbelieving, he reached for the phone and squinted at the screen. ‘Evans,’ he grunted. ‘What the hell does Evans want? Doesn’t the bloody man know I’m on my honeymoon?’

‘Don’t answer it,’ Triona said sharply, raising her head from the pillow. ‘Just don’t answer it.’

By now she should have known him better. Neville punched the green button. ‘Yes?’

It was, without a doubt, the most uncomfortable bed Callie had ever slept in. It was soft, for a start, and lumpy as well. There was a deep indentation—a trough, to put not too fine a point on it—in the centre of the bed, towards which she inevitably rolled and where she stayed for the whole of the night. Though it was a double bed, it would have been almost impossible for two people to share it without each clinging to opposite edges of the mattress.

Through the long and miserable night, Callie’s mind threw up a succession of unanswerable questions.

How long had Brian and Jane had this bed, she wondered, and where had they obtained it? Had they bought it new, at the beginning of their marriage, and worn it out themselves, or was it a family heirloom? Had it already been through a succession of owners before it came to reside at All Saints’ Vicarage?

Did Jane and Brian have any idea how uncomfortable it was? If they’d used and discarded it, perhaps they did know—and just didn’t care that their guests would wake up in the morning feeling worse than when they’d retired at night. Assuming, that is, they could sleep at all.

There was only one place for a bed like this, more like a mediaeval torture device than a place for rest and refreshment: a landfill somewhere.

Should she mention it to Jane? If Jane were, for instance, to ask how she’d slept?

Not jolly likely, Callie decided. She was on shaky enough ground as it was. Brian might have insisted on her coming here to stay, but Callie could tell that Jane wasn’t keen. Dinner last night had been frosty, to say the least, in spite of Brian’s heedless chatter.

And unfortunately it was obvious that Jane was not a dog person. How anyone could resist Bella’s charms was beyond Callie’s imagination, but Jane managed it very well. She insisted that Bella be banned from the public rooms of the house and confined to Callie’s bedroom. So Bella, accustomed to sleeping in Callie’s kitchen, was unsettled as well, her bed now tucked into the corner of the guest room. She whimpered occasionally through the night, further interrupting Callie’s intermittent periods of sleep.

How could this arrangement possibly work for the weeks it was going to take to get her roof sorted? When she had to be out during the day—and she certainly wasn’t planning to spend any more time than necessary in this dreary room—what was Bella meant to do? How could her poor dog survive?

If every night was going to be as sleepless as this one, how could Callie herself survive?

As the first finger of morning light poked between the ill-fitting curtains, Callie groaned and buried her face in the pillow.

At least there was no rush this morning. This was her day off; she could remain in this dreadful bed for as long as she liked—or as long as she could bear it.

Mark Lombardi rarely saw his flatmate, Geoff Brownlow. They both worked long hours, and most of Mark’s evenings, when he wasn’t working, were spent with Callie. He and Geoff weren’t friends by anyone’s definition: they’d never been down to the pub for a drink together, or engaged in anything but the most superficial of conversations. Their flat-share was a business arrangement—the result of a newspaper advert—which happened to work very well for both of them, most of the time. Both Mark and Geoff were tidy by nature, so there was no conflict on that front. Once in a while they both needed the shower or the kitchen at the same time, but they were civilised about it and had never argued. For Mark, it was worth the occasional delayed shower to be on his own, out of his parents’ house. He knew that he could never afford the flat on his own; Geoff ’s presence was a small price to pay for that freedom.

So it was, Mark recognised, a most uncharacteristic thing he’d done the night before.

Callie had cancelled their evening together. He’d been planning, as was customary, to go to her flat after work. It was his turn to cook—of the two of them he was by far the more accomplished and confident cook—so he’d already bought the ingredients for dinner. But Callie’s flat had suffered storm damage and was off limits, that night and for some weeks to come, and her move into the vicarage left them without a place to be together. In any case, she’d felt strongly that the first night she would need to settle in to her temporary home and have a meal with Brian and Jane.

As a result, Mark had gone home with his food—home to his flat. And Geoff had come in from work a few minutes later. On impulse, Mark had made the offer. ‘I have rather a lot of food here,’ he’d said. ‘If you don’t have plans…’

Geoff didn’t have plans. So Mark cooked the sort of dinner he’d grown up with and had been taught by his mother to prepare to perfection: heaps of glistening pasta, followed by tender braised steaks and crisp vegetables, ending with a melt-in-the-mouth pudding, all accompanied with a nice bottle of wine.

Afterwards Geoff produced an almost-full bottle of a fine single malt whisky, and they settled down for the rest of the evening.

And Mark did most of the talking. He told Geoff about Callie: how they’d met, how he felt about her. How he was trying to take things slowly, let them develop in their own time. How that process was now interrupted by Callie’s forced removal to the vicarage.

‘It won’t be easy for you to sleep with her there,’ Geoff observed, refilling their glasses.

‘We’re not…I mean, we haven’t got to that point yet,’ admitted Mark.

‘You’re not sleeping with her?’ Geoff ’s look of incredulity was replaced by one of dawning comprehension. ‘Oh, I get it. She’s a priest. So she won’t because it’s against her religion or something.’

‘Not exactly.’ Technically, Callie wasn’t a priest yet—that wouldn’t happen for a few months—though that wasn’t what Mark meant. How could he tell this virtual stranger that he was the one holding back, not Callie? Not that he didn’t want to, desperately. But there was something about the fact that she was in Holy Orders…

When Mark woke the next morning, a little the worse for the whisky, it was with a slight feeling of embarrassment that he had opened his heart to Geoff that way. He could blame the whisky for loosening his tongue, but the fact was that he’d needed to talk to someone. In any other circumstances he would have gone to Serena, the person with whom he’d always shared his feelings; at the moment that just wasn’t possible. And Neville wasn’t around. Anyway, he knew what Neville would say: just stop being such a bloody fool and shag her.

So instead he’d bared his soul to Geoff, his flatmate. The person he had to live with, even if he didn’t see him very often. How stupid was that?

He certainly didn’t feel like facing him now, with his head throbbing and a rather unpleasant taste in his mouth.

Fortunately Mark didn’t have a very early start this morning. He wasn’t going straight to the police station; he was going to accompany someone to court at the Old Bailey.

He could use a couple of paracetamol—or some strong coffee. But he could hear Geoff in the kitchen. The coffee could wait.

‘Yes, Sir. Yes. I understand. But—’ Neville grimaced at Triona, who was sitting up in bed glaring at him, miming dramatic throat-cutting gestures. NO, she mouthed. N - O.

Neville made a heroic effort. ‘I’m on my honeymoon, Sir. Just halfway through…’ He listened to the voice on the other end, then sighed. ‘Yes. I see.’

With a withering look, Triona got up and went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

After a few more minutes of a largely one-sided conversation, Neville pressed the button to terminate the call, threw the phone on the bed, and followed Triona to the bathroom. He tapped on the door. ‘Darling,’ he said in as conciliatory a tone as he could manage. ‘We need to talk.’

She flung the door open. ‘Don’t you “darling” me. I know what you’re going to say.’

‘You don’t.’

‘You’re going back to work, Neville. I’m not stupid. I’ve figured that much out.’

‘God, Triona. Let me explain.’

‘Explain?’ She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘What part of “honeymoon” do you and that bloody man not understand?’

Neville took a deep breath. ‘Listen, Triona. This isn’t an ordinary case. It’s a dead baby.’ He knew he wasn’t playing fair, but the bald statement had the desired effect.

‘Oh.’ Her eyes widened, her arms dropped to cradle her bump instinctively, protectively, and all the fight had gone out of her voice. ‘What happened to it?’

‘That’s what Evans wants me to find out.’ Neville took her arm and guided her to a nearby chair. ‘Sit down, darling. I’ll tell you everything I know.’

She sank into the chair, unprotesting, while Neville perched on the edge of the bed, knee-to-knee with her.

‘This is a high profile case, to say the least,’ he explained. ‘It’s Jodee and Chazz. Their baby.’

Triona stared at him blankly. ‘Who the hell are Jodee and Chazz?’

How, Neville wondered, could anyone in the civilised world ask a question like that? But Triona wasn’t like most of the people in the civilised world: she didn’t read newspapers, she didn’t even own a telly. It never ceased to amaze him, the way she managed to travel through life without absorbing so much of the minutiae in which other people revelled. Her obliviousness to popular culture was, he realised, one of the things that made her so special, one of the things he found so endearing about her.

‘They’re only the most famous couple on the planet,’ he said. It was a slight exaggeration, perhaps, but not that much of one. He couldn’t actually think of another pair who had, within the past few months, been the subject of more column inches of tabloid verbiage. Not even Posh and Becks.

Jodee and Chazz. Where to begin?

‘You know about the programme “twentyfour/seven”?’ Neville ventured.

Triona shrugged. ‘Well, yes,’ she admitted. ‘The programme where a bunch of thick people get shut up in a house together with the cameras running. I’ve heard of it. A few people at work were hooked on it last summer.’

‘Jodee and Chazz were a couple of those thick people,’ he said. ‘They fell in love. And…let’s just say that they didn’t make any effort to hide their attraction to each other from the rest of the world. Or what they did about it, either.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘You mean they…’

‘Yes. Live. On camera.’

‘Ugh.’ Triona shuddered. ‘And you wonder why I don’t have a telly.’

‘I didn’t see it myself,’ Neville assured her. ‘But millions of others did.’ He grinned. ‘Usually, on these programmes, it’s a question of “will they/won’t they?”. But with Jodee and Chazz it was more a question of when. And how often. Apparently they were at it like rabbits, all hours of the day and night. Mostly in the hot tub.’

‘So their baby…’

He nodded. ‘You’ve got it in one. The baby was, according to the tabloids, the first to be conceived on live telly, in front of the camera.’

Triona’s hands went to her bump. ‘How horrible. Didn’t people complain? About public decency?’

‘Thousands. The more complaints there were, the better for the ratings.’

‘It’s all so…cynical.’

‘And that was just the beginning,’ he continued. ‘Morning sickness. Jodee suffered from it terribly. The watching world saw her throw up, over and over again.’

‘I can relate to that,’ Triona said feelingly. ‘Though I’m glad no one was watching.’

He’d missed that stage, Neville realised with a pang. While she was experiencing morning sickness, he hadn’t even known she was pregnant. That was something he didn’t want to dwell on.

‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘the baby was born a couple of months ago.’

‘On telly?’

‘Thankfully, no. We were denied that pleasure,’ he said ironically, ‘because they’d done a deal with one of those celebrity magazines. The birth was a photo exclusive. A big cover story. Though,’ he added, ‘someone in the delivery room apparently shot a bootleg video on their camera phone and put it up on YouTube. It’s been viewed by millions of people.’

Triona lowered her head for a moment, her eyes closed, then straightened up and looked at him levelly. ‘So what’s happened? To the baby?’ He could tell that she was struggling to keep control of her voice.

‘That’s what we need to find out. Evans said that she was discovered dead in her cot early this morning. The doctor was called in, of course, and he notified the police.’ Neville pressed his fingertips together and looked at them rather than at his wife; he was surprised at how her distress was affecting him. ‘It’s being treated as a suspicious death. Evans says there’s no evidence so far that it’s anything other than cot death, but we can’t afford to cut any corners with this one.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand that.’

‘The world will be, quite literally, watching.’

‘But why,’ Triona added, with a bit of her old spirit, ‘does it have to be you? DI Neville Stewart, and no one else? Doesn’t Evans have someone there who’s not on his honeymoon?’

He shrugged. ‘He says he doesn’t trust anyone else. There will be quite a lot of involvement with the media, obviously, and I’ve had experience with that sort of thing before.’ Neville admitted to himself, though he wasn’t going to say it to Triona, that he was just a bit flattered by Evans’ confidence in him. ‘I mean, can you imagine what a disaster someone like Sid Cowley would be?’

Triona chose not to speculate on that; instead she changed the subject to the practicalities. ‘Our plans,’ she said. ‘We can’t just leave. What about our non-refundable aeroplane tickets?’

‘Evans said it will be taken care of. We’re just to go to the airport, and everything will be sorted.’

‘Not everything,’ Triona said quietly. She got up and went to the window, pulled back the curtain—‘beach view’, just as the brochure had promised—and stood with her back to Neville. ‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ she said, in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

‘I’ll make it up to you,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Another time. We’ll come back.’

She turned to face him; her voice sharpened. ‘And how would things be different? How could I be sure the same thing wouldn’t happen again?’

Neville shrugged, then sighed. He knew there was no answer he could give Triona that would satisfy her, and it was all his fault. Was this how it was going to be from now on? Twenty minutes ago, he’d been deliriously happy. He should have known it couldn’t last.

Mixing wine and spirits—not to mention a healthy dose of confession—had not been a good idea.

Once he’d heard Geoff leave the flat, Mark got up and went in search of paracetamol. The packet wasn’t in its usual place in the bathroom cabinet; he found it sitting on the edge of the basin, which indicated to him that perhaps Geoff was also suffering more than a bit. It certainly wasn’t like tidy Geoff to neglect to put something away.

Mark downed a couple of tablets, then took a long shower.

‘Coffee,’ he said to himself, then ‘Serena’.

Mark made pretty good coffee himself, but next to his mother, Serena made the best coffee in the world. A cup of her concentrated caffeine would quickly sort him out.

If he left soon, he would have time to call in and see her before he was due in court. She should be at home this time of the morning—after getting Chiara off to school, and before going to La Venezia, the family restaurant, to supervise the lunch shift. He had a good excuse, apart from the coffee: he needed to have a word with her about Chiara’s birthday.

Chiara, his younger niece, would be thirteen tomorrow. A teenager! Not a little girl any longer.

Mark reflected on this as he walked from the flat—conveniently located off High Holborn—through Holborn and Clerkenwell to the di Stefanos’ house. How ancient it made him feel: he so clearly remembered himself, as a teenager, holding the tiny baby when she was just a few hours old.

He wondered how Serena felt about her baby reaching such a milestone, especially with all the other things that were going on in her life.

Serena wasn’t likely to tell him. Close as they were, she kept her feelings to herself—apart from the extraordinary occasion when, under exceptional stress, she’d poured out to him her heartbreak over her husband’s infidelity.

When he was about halfway there Mark rang ahead on his mobile to let Serena know he was coming, so when he arrived she answered the door promptly.

‘The coffee’s nearly ready,’ she said with a smile, kissing him on both cheeks.

‘Not a moment too soon.’

They went through to the cosy kitchen and Mark pulled a chair up to the table while Serena poured the coffee. ‘Not at work this morning?’ she asked.

‘Court,’ he said. ‘The Old Bailey. I’m meeting someone there in about an hour. An old case from last year.’

His sister nodded. Mark’s job as a Family Liaison Officer often involved long-term contact with bereaved families, and that meant accompanying them to court to provide moral support during trials.

Mark accepted the coffee gratefully and took a long, appreciative sip. ‘Thanks, Serena. You’re wonderful.’

She produced a rather brittle smile. ‘I’m glad someone thinks so.’ Then she shook her head and frowned. ‘Sorry, Marco. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not fair to dump on you.’

‘Dump on me all you like.’ There wasn’t anyone else for her to let off steam to, he knew: she had to keep the girls from finding out that anything was wrong. Not to mention i genitori, their parents. Mark could only imagine the strain it must be on Serena.

‘That’s not why you came,’ she said, decisively changing the subject. ‘You wanted to talk about Chiara’s birthday?’

‘I just wondered what the plans are. Since it’s on a Saturday.’ Saturday was inevitably the busiest day of the week in the restaurant trade, so Mark assumed that Serena, as front-of-house manager of La Venezia, would be tied up at lunch time as well as in the evening.

Serena shrugged. ‘We’ll have to celebrate it on Sunday.’ Sunday was the one day of the week that La Venezia didn’t open its doors, and it was traditionally a big family day for the Lombardis and di Stefanos. ‘With la famiglia, at lunch. And I’ve told Chiara that she can invite a few of her friends round later in the afternoon, for some cake. Mamma’s baking it.’

‘Is Angelina coming?’ Chiara’s older sister was at university in Birmingham.

‘I doubt it. Term’s not over yet. Though,’ Serena added, ‘she might just surprise us and turn up.’

Mark finished off the small, strong cup of coffee and held the empty cup out for a refill. ‘What I really need to know is what I should get her. For a present. Something she’d really like.’

Serena twisted her mouth in a wry smile as she poured out the last of the coffee, then got up to start another pot. ‘It used to be so easy, didn’t it? Dolls, stuffed toys, coloured pencils and boxes of watercolours. Socks with cute animals on them, and hair ribbons.’

‘But those things are too babyish for a teenager?’

She sighed. ‘These days it’s all pop singers and earrings.’

‘Chiara doesn’t have pierced ears, does she?’ Mark frowned, trying to remember. His niece had always worn her hair long, over her ears, so he hadn’t particularly noticed.

‘Not yet. But she’s wild to have them done. So we’re going to pay for that, and we’ve bought her some nice gold earrings.’

‘I suppose I could get her some earrings as well?’ He’d need Callie’s help, Mark realised; he wouldn’t have the first idea what sort of jewellery would be suitable. ‘Or is there an album she really wants?’

Serena wrapped her hands round her own coffee cup and looked thoughtful. ‘She keeps talking about the new album by that singer Karma.’

‘Karma who?’

‘Just Karma.’ Serena shook her head. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard of her, Marco. She won the last “Junior Idol” competition. Chiara thinks she’s wonderful.’

‘Vaguely,’ Mark admitted. He was not a follower of “Junior Idol”. ‘Well, that does sound like a good idea, then. If that’s what she wants.’

‘It would make her very happy.’

‘Consider it done.’ That, realised Mark, would make his life much easier—he could just walk into any record shop and ask for it. ‘I’d like to give it to her on her actual birthday, though. If I come round tomorrow evening, will she be here?’

Serena got up and retrieved the coffee pot from the hob, topping up Mark’s cup. ‘Absolutely. Saturday night is “Junior Idol” night. Wild horses wouldn’t drag Chiara away from the telly on a Saturday night.’

‘I suppose I’d better time my visit so I don’t interrupt.’ He laughed.

‘It’s not a joke, Marco. Fortunately for me, I’m never here on a Saturday night. Joe has that pleasure. But interrupting “Junior Idol”—well, I wouldn’t suggest it. Not if you want to remain her favourite uncle.’

Chapter Three

Lilith Noone, a reporter with the Daily Globe, found out about the death of Jodee and Chazz’s baby at about the same time and in the same way as the rest of the press. But she had, she felt, a natural advantage over the competition.

She knew Jodee and Chazz.

At first she had known them in the same way as everyone else did: on the outside looking in, via the live television cameras. Lilith was no voyeur; her interest in the couple and their romance was a professional one, spawning many column inches of verbiage in every issue of the Daily Globe over a number of months.

It was true, she acknowledged, that the Daily Globe’s position as self-appointed upholder of the nation’s moral standards meant that those early stories had taken a somewhat censorious tone, while revealing everything the watching public longed to know. That, in Lilith’s mind, was the beauty of the Daily Globe: they could have their cake and eat it. They could draw in readers with titillating headlines—‘Naughty Romps’ and ‘Hot Tub Hotties’—and revel in the most salacious, prurient details, as long as moral outrage was expressed at the end of it. There was a real art to it; Lilith liked to think it was an art at which she excelled.

And everything had changed when the show was over, when the cameras were no longer focused on the couple’s hot tub antics. The baby was on the way, a wedding was planned, and suddenly Jodee and Chazz were exemplars of family values—and therefore the new darlings of the Daily Globe. The stories became no less frequent, but now they were fawning in tone. Lilith had met them face-to-face and interviewed them on a number of occasions; she’d even snagged an invitation to their wedding, the only journalist—apart from the sponsoring celebrity magazine—to be so honoured. She prided herself that she had been invited as a friend rather than as a member of the press.

So when the shocking news that their adored baby was dead appeared on the wire, Lilith felt confident in picking up the phone and ringing Jodee’s private mobile number.

She wouldn’t have been surprised if Jodee herself didn’t take the call; she was undoubtedly in shock. But Jodee did answer, her unmistakable Geordie voice much fainter than usual. She sounded tearful, dazed, though not displeased to hear from Lilith.

‘I heard. I can’t believe it,’ Lilith said. ‘Oh, you poor things. Can I come to see you?’

Jodee didn’t wait to confer with Chazz. ‘Yeah, come,’ she said. ‘We’re at home.’

Within seconds Lilith was on her way out of the door.

Callie might not need to get up early on her day off, but that didn’t mean her dog didn’t have certain physical needs, first thing in the morning. So Callie had a quick wash in the handbasin, pulled on a pair of jeans and a fleece, and clipped Bella’s lead to her collar.

The little dog was more than ready to go out, wriggling with excitement.

‘Let’s be quiet,’ Callie whispered. ‘We don’t want to disturb Brian and Jane.’

There was no sign of either one of them as they went along the corridor and down the stairs. Taking Bella into the back garden would have meant going through the kitchen, where the Stanfords were probably breakfasting, so instead Callie checked that she had the house key she’d been issued, and headed for the front door.

Outside it was cool and damp, as if it had rained in the night and might very well rain again. ‘Let’s go to the park,’ she said to Bella, and set off in the direction of Hyde Park.