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law any more. I mean she hasn’t sold out or anything. I’m doing sausages and mash for her and me, but I’m sure Jess would let you share her cheese-and-potato pie. And we can all have the same salad and pudding. Do stay.’
    ‘I wish I could,’ Cynthia said, looping her slippery dark-gold hair back into the combs she used to keep it up. ‘But I’m on my way to meet someone. In fact, I ought to get going.’
    ‘Not yet. Stay and talk to Jess while I get started on the cooking.’
    ‘Why don’t we do that for you?’ Jess said. ‘You look as though you could use a shower.’
    Glad to see her in such high spirits, Caro left the kitchen to the two of them. It was good to be able to take time under the hard jets of water and feel the day’s tensions being washed away. She emerged, cool and a bit calmer, to dress in loose linen trousers and a T-shirt. She would have kept her feet bare, except that it was dustbin day tomorrow and she’d have to take the rubbish out later.
    Cynthia and Jess were still talking amid the potato peelings and onion skins, while savoury smells wafted out of the oven. When Caro joined them, Jess looked her up and down and said, ‘Couldn’t you have made a bit more effort? Those trousers make you look like the back end of an elephant. Even you must have noticed that pure linen only works when it’s new.’
    ‘Oh, Jess! What does it matter? They’re comfortable, and Trish won’t mind what I look like.’
    ‘I mind.’
    Caro couldn’t stop herself snapping, which made Jess rush out of the kitchen.
    ‘You’re a bit hard on her,’ Cynthia said gently, laying a hand on Caro’s shoulder. ‘Couldn’t you cut her some slack while she’s having such a tough time?’
    ‘She’s not the only one.’
    ‘Don’t, Caro.’
    ‘Don’t what?’
    ‘Talk like an angry police officer. I know you don’t mean to do it, but I don’t think you’ve got any idea how hard it must be for Jess to deal with after she’s spent an almost silent day on her own, worrying about whether she’s ever going to get another job.’
    Caro shook her head, not sure whether she was offering an apology or expressing disbelief. Cynthia just smiled. Later, when she’d gone and Jess was taking her turn in the shower, Caro cleared up the kitchen as a penance and distracted herself by thinking about Daniel Crossman.
    She had seen far too many men like him to mistake the cold watchfulness in his eyes or miss the violence hidden behind his superficial stillness. He was a control freak; he had an obsession with cleanliness that, to her at least, meant there were things about himself he could not bear to acknowledge; and he ruled his unhappy little household with tyrannical rigidity.
    The only problem was that no one knew what else he had
been doing. Unless they found out within the next fourteen days, Kim was going to have to go back and face it all over again. Getting the interim care order had been hard enough. If the chief social worker hadn’t been so much on Caro’s side, Kim would probably have been sent back already.
    Caro lifted the heavy plastic rubbish bag and carried it out of the flat. As she turned into the side alley, where the bins were kept, she heard a familiar voice calling her name from the street, and adding, ‘D’you want a hand with that?’
    ‘It’s fine, thanks, Trish,’ she said, turning to greet her friend. ‘How are you? Not that I need to ask. You look fantastic. But you must be sweltering in that black suit.’
    ‘It’s cooler than it looks,’ Trish said, flapping the sides of her jacket over the white muslin shirt. ‘Although I envy you your trousers. I wish I’d had time to go home to change. We had a heavy session today.’
    ‘Poor you.’
    ‘But you look as though you haven’t had too easy a day either. A tough case?’
    ‘Awful.’ Caro had learned not to talk to Jess about the children she was fighting to protect, but Trish was different. She wouldn’t mind listening