It was cramped. The baby shared Ellie’s bedroom, Manon was in the spare room, and Fly was on a put-you-up in the lounge, which he diligently tidied each morning before anyone was up. In this she saw all his worry about the precariousness of his situation.
Those two months living like that – using up all Manon’s annual leave and numerous days owing from years of night shifts and weekends on duty – allowed Fly to complete his last term at primary school, where the teachers were invested in him. And it allowed Ellie the odd night off. Ellie and Manon had some understanding of what Fly needed most – the importance of keeping to existing routines after the death of one’s mother.
‘It’s nice – having you around,’ Ellie said. ‘He brings out good things in you, Fly does.’
But the person who brought out the best in all of them was Solly. How that baby delighted them, Fly especially, who lay next to Solly on the carpet and tickled his toes, blew raspberries on his tummy, and covered his own face with his hands, removing them to say ‘Boo!’ and Solly’s chuckle would ring out, its music like a belly-burst of joy. Squawking, guffawing, high notes like piano keys – it was impossible not to smile when Solly laughed, and he appeared to spend most of his day laughing.
When all her leave was used up, Manon’s hand was forced. ‘I’ll ask Fly to stay with friends,’ she told Ellie, ‘just while I square things in Huntingdon. I don’t expect you—’
‘Don’t be silly. He has to stay here,’ Ellie told her. ‘Solly loves him. And anyway, he mustn’t be uprooted too much, not after what he’s been through. I like the company, to be honest. How long will it take you? When will you be back?’ And there was fear in Ellie’s eyes that they might be separated again.
‘Not long,’ Manon said, telling herself the changes she was about to make were temporary – a stint in the Met while she sorted out a permanent arrangement for Fly, in a foster family or some such.
Edith Hind returned to the UK with her mother, attending Cambridgeshire Police HQ voluntarily. She wanted to explain, she said. She wore a white shirt buttoned to the top, its pointy collar ever-so prudish, navy cigarette trousers over nerdish brown brogues, and glasses with thick black frames, which Manon thought were probably an affectation. The whole ensemble worked to create the impression of a serious young woman, genuinely troubled by circumstances unforeseen. Despite the demure librarian outfit, she was breathtaking: glossy auburn hair curling beneath her pointed chin; skin like alabaster; slim and graceful. Manon couldn’t stop staring, as if she were hungry for more of her, and she wondered if Edith’s beauty meant she should face greater censure. Or perhaps less. Did Manon want someone so beautiful to get away with it or did she want to enviously punish her?
She and Harriet sat on the other side of the table to Edith, who was flanked by Miriam and a very expensive lawyer.
‘I want to hear this,’ said Davy, who stood with his back to the wall. Everyone else, including Gary Stanton, watched the interview in the video room.
‘Miss Hind,’ Harriet said, with unctuous politesse, ‘there were traces of blood in the kitchen of your home in George Street – along a kitchen cabinet and some pooling on the floor, plus some drips of blood in the hallway of your home. Can you explain how they got there?’
‘Yes, yes I can,’ she said, pushing copper ropes of hair behind one ear. Adorable. ‘When I got back to the house with Helena, I found I was much drunker than I realised, swaying and stumbling, struggling to stay upright, to be honest.’ Innocent little laugh. ‘In the kitchen I poured myself a glass of wine – this was after Helena had gone – but in picking it up, I knocked it, hard, on the worktop and it literally smashed in my hand, cutting me across the palm. I was shocked by the amount of blood – it literally gushed from my palm. I stared at it for a moment, in that drunken way, as if it belonged to someone else, and in that time it splashed down the kitchen cupboard and onto the floor. I did a rather poor job of cleaning up the broken glass. I put the bloodied shards into the bin and got myself a new wine glass down, which I never used in the end. I stumbled upstairs holding my bleeding hand – which is why there were drips on the hallway floor – and managed to knock half the coats off their hooks as I staggered up to the bathroom for a bandage. I’m sorry,’ she said, looking Harriet in the eye, ‘if this was misconstrued as an injury following an act of violence. I had no idea it would be.’
‘Why did you leave the door to your house open?’ Harriet asks.
‘What?’
‘When Will Carter returned home, he says he found the front door ajar. Why is that?’