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complained
when work took you away for days or even weeks at a time?'
    'That's why I went freelance, to have more control over my life.'
But it was a valid point. 'Isn't it something you can do here?'
    'I already work from home two days a week. I can hardly object to
a few hours at the weekend.'
    She left the house at eight. Her office was in the centre of Crawley,
a ten-minute drive away. She gave him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek
and promised to be back as soon as she could.
    'Give me a rough idea,' he said as she opened the front door. Clad
only in jogging trousers and a t-shirt, the freezing cold air was a pleasurable
shock.
    'I don't know. One o'clock. Two at the latest.'
    'Two at the latest,' he repeated, as if her own words might bind her.
    She nodded, unlocked the car and got in. There was something
unreadable on her face as she backed off the driveway. A look he was
seeing more and more frequently, and didn't like at all.
    During the ad break he got up to make coffee and asked if the children
wanted another drink.
    'More juice, please,' said Maddie, thrusting her cup at him.
    'Can we turn over?' said Tom. He reached for the remote control,
only to find his sister snatching at it. In doing so she slopped the dregs
of her orange juice over the sofa.
    'Bloody hell!' Craig roared. Loud enough to make both children
flinch. He was a big man, six feet tall and broad-shouldered, and often
he was clumsy himself. Part of him knew he was overreacting even
as he took the cup from her, but then Tom grabbed the remote control.
'You're not having that, either,' Craig said, and Tom, seeing the look
on his face, meekly handed it over.
    'Fetch a cloth to wipe this up,' he said. Maddie hurried from the
room, bottom lip trembling. Craig felt the familiar pang of guilt that
his anger had upset them, and made sure he thanked her when she
returned with a hand towel. Not what he'd asked for, but it would do.
    'Go and play upstairs,' he suggested. 'Better still, tidy your bedrooms.'
    Alone in the room, he did some idle channel-hopping. On News 24 a grim-faced presenter said, '. . . village of Chilton.' He'd already
pressed the remote again, and had to wait for it to go back. This time
he caught, 'More on that as soon as we have it.'
    The newsreader went on to the next story. Craig sat forward,
watching the ticker flow along the bottom of the screen: Bush declares real improvements in Iraq . Then, beneath the banner of BREAKING
NEWS: Reports of a serious shooting incident in a Sussex village. Emergency services are at the scene .
    At first the words didn't sink in. Chilton was practically the most
sedate place he'd ever been. He could only imagine that someone
had committed suicide with a shotgun.
    There was a cordless phone on the unit next to the TV. He picked
it up and pressed number four on the speed dial. Heard the rapid set of
bleeps and then a moment's silence. Instead of a ringing sound, a recorded
voice announced, 'Sorry, we have been unable to connect your call.'
    He got a dialling tone and tried again. Same result. He tried dialling
the number from memory, in case the programmed number was
wrong. Same result.
    It didn't mean anything, necessarily. Far too early to think the worst.
But still he felt a shiver. A small but robust conviction that something
was very, very wrong.
    The phone book wasn't in any of its usual locations. He grew frantic,
running around the house. He found it in Nina's office, hidden in a
stack of paperwork beneath her desk. He knelt on the carpet and
riffled through the pages. Stupidly, the name of the pub deserted him.
Was it the Green Man or the Long Man?
    It was the Green Man. He used the phone in Nina's office and
rang the number. Got the same result: no connection possible.
    He found a number for the village store and tried that. Same
result. He stared at the phone book, then swiped it shut. This was
absurd. Probably just a technical fault. And the TV must have the
wrong place.
    * * *
    By the time he