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back garden.
    Kind of cruel to lie to me about what she’d written in her notebook?
    I shake my head, disgusted by the absurdity of my line of reasoning. How many people write lists of their own character traits in notebooks that they carry around with them?
    Jo’s the person I’m itching to discuss it with, but I’m not going to allow myself to ring her as soon as I get in, however much I’d like to. On a day when I’ve already done too many bad things, I’m going to exercise some self-restraint for once in my life and stop myself from adding another to the list. Since Little Orchard, I have often drawn other people’s inexplicable behaviour to Jo’s attention and asked her if she can think of any reason why someone might behave so bizarrely. I do it to make her feel awkward; I am trying to tell her without actually telling her that I have not forgotten her and Neil’s mystifying disappearing act that Christmas – never referred to by any of us and never accounted for.
    If Jo is conscious of my hidden agenda, she’s expert at concealing it; my frequent observations about the irrationality of this person or that person never seem to throw her off track. I’d like to think she’s as aware as I am of all the important things we don’t say to one another when we get the chance – aware, crucially, that these gaps between us are her fault – but I’m starting to wonder if she has deleted Little Orchard from her mind, and is genuinely oblivious to its continued occupation of mine. From the way she says, ‘That is odd’ and ‘What a weirdo!’ when I describe the strange behaviour of my various colleagues, it’s pretty clear she’s offering that response as someone who wouldn’t dream of behaving so oddly herself.
    I arrive at the corner of Spilling Road and Clavering Road at my usual time of twenty-eight minutes past four. Dinah and Nonie’s school bus has two drop-off points in the centre of Rawndesley – here and the station car park. The station is the more popular one, but for me this one has two advantages: hardly anybody uses it, and it’s no more than five or six strides from my front door. Luke and I bought number 9 Clavering Road just over a year ago in order to have somewhere big enough for the girls to move into. I was determined to buy the biggest house I could afford; nothing else mattered. It still doesn’t. I don’t care that the carpeting throughout is hideous, synthetic and bright red, or that all the curtains are faded floral and so heavily swagged that you can barely see any window between the loops and folds of fabric; I don’t care that we can’t afford to replace any of it. What I love about my house is that even though it’s on a main road, even though I live with three other people, two of whom are children, I can always find a silent, empty room when I need one. Luke’s and my old house had a ground floor that was entirely open plan apart from a downstairs loo; this one has floor after floor of square rooms with closable doors. When I mentioned this to Jo as a major attraction, it was obvious she disapproved. ‘Who do you want to shut out?’ she asked. She didn’t say so, but I knew she doubted my ability to look after Dinah and Nonie properly – Saint Jo, who believes no one can nurture quite as well as she can, who loves nothing more than to surround herself with as many dependent relatives as possible.
    I told her the truth: that the only person I want to shut out – need to, sometimes – is myself. I remember what I said. I chose my words carefully to tempt her interest: ‘My mind can be a harsh environment. Sometimes I need to take it far away from the people I care about, to make sure I don’t contaminate anybody.’ Jo’s reply shocked me. ‘Ignore me,’ she said. ‘I’m just jealous. Dinah and Nonie are amazing kids. You’re so lucky.’ At the time, I laughed and said, ‘As if you haven’t got enough people on your plate.’ It was only later, lying