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up on the second ring.
    â€˜Hello, Mac, how are you holding up?’
    â€˜I’m . . . well, I’m managing. Be better tomorrow when I’m busy.’
    â€˜Have you eaten?’
    â€˜Not yet, no. But I will, I promise; that will be my next call.’
    Rina harrumphed her disapproval. ‘Make sure it’s something decent, then. Mac, we had something odd happen today. Karen came back, demanding to see George.’
    â€˜Karen? Are you sure? No, of course you are. You saw her?’
    â€˜She came here. She wants George to go away with her. He, of course, wants to stay. There’s far too much holding him in Frantham now for him to want to be uprooted again, but—’
    â€˜But you don’t think Karen will see that. Rina, it looks as though I’ve picked a bad time to leave. Tell Frank Baker and Andy. Give them a heads up, just in case there’s trouble.’
    â€˜I will,’ Rina promised, ‘though I don’t know there’s a lot they can do. Nothing wrong with a girl coming back to visit her brother.’
    â€˜Everything wrong if that girl is trouble. Rina, you know what she did as well as I do.’
    â€˜But can you prove it, Mac?’
    Prove it? Probably, but he needed to be there and then he needed to explain why he had not presented his evidence before, and that might prove, well, something of a problem. ‘Let’s just hope she takes herself off again before it becomes an issue,’ Mac said. ‘I’ll try and get back for the weekend, depending on what happens here.’
    â€˜Is much happening there?’ Rina wanted to know.
    Mac had to smile at Rina’s obvious curiosity. ‘So far, not a lot,’ he said. ‘Enough for me to know that I was right to come back, I think. But also enough to know I don’t belong here any more. Rina, it’s the strangest feeling, coming back and wondering how the hell I could ever have thought of this place as home.’
    â€˜And is Frantham home?’ she asked softly.
    â€˜You know it is, Rina, love,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. Count on it. And, meantime, tell George not to worry; we’ll sort it out.’ He just hoped, as he hung up, that sorting it out did not involve arresting George’s sister.
    He was unexpectedly hungry now. Not hungry enough to eat one of Alec’s ready meals; he’d vowed after his first weeks in Frantham, when he’d lived on anything that could be prepared in five minutes’ use of the microwave, that he’d never touch such things again. He flicked through the leaflets Alec had left, remembering some of the names from his time in Pinsent. Found an Indian restaurant that did deliveries and phoned through an order for the set meal for one without really paying much attention to what it was. Remembered then that he had promised to call Emily.
    She must have been waiting for his call because she picked up on the second ring.
    â€˜I’ve got your number set up on the caller display,’ she said. ‘So I knew it was you.’
    He asked if the police liaison officer had been in touch.
    â€˜She has,’ Emily told him. ‘Lydia. She’s nice, I’ve got her numbers and she’s arranged for the community support officers to keep an extra lookout. She said she could stay if I wanted, but I’ve got Calum and I’m sure there’s other people need her more. I can get in touch any time, she said. And she’s going to sort out about having our calls monitored and all that. She says she doesn’t think he’ll show up here, but I’ve been thinking and I think Calum is right and he might.’
    â€˜Oh?’ Mac queried. ‘Why is that, Em?’
    â€˜Because he’s already shown himself once. There’s no reason not to now. He’s getting ready for something else. He’s showing off, telling you, and me too, just how untouchable he