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the latest stab at conception. Which was fine, which was what we both wanted, which was the plan. But on this occasion Jeremy halted mid-unbuckling, distracted perhaps by the sight of the myriad repairs and renewals the room needed before it could be considered half-habitable. He didn’t say anything, but I guessed his thoughts – We
must
ask Hetty about that ceiling, the plasterboard looks bowed. And does that window need replacing? – before he remembered why he’d brought me in here in the first place.
    ‘Come on, then,’ I said from the bed, my toneencouraging but also leavened with a new emotion, not guilt yet but some furtive precursor of it. I’d never used that tone with him before. To someone listening at the bedroom door, I could have been his mother about to tuck him into bed for a nap, or an escort with a bashful first-timer on her hands.
    In order not to think about Rob Whalen, I thought about nothing.



Chapter 3
Christy, April 2013
    It would be a source of consolation in time to come that their families visited the new house while fortune still favoured the brave; when she and Joe had the pleasure of presenting their new home as a proud gain rather than a potential loss.
    And what a pleasure it was!
    Eager as greyhounds, her parents raced to Lime Park on that first Sunday afternoon, tearing through the door with flowers and champagne and a card with no shortage of exclamation marks in the message:
Good luck in your new home, Joe & Christy! Congratulations! You did it!!
    ‘What is this, ten times bigger than your old place?’ her mother said, as the tour ascended to the suite of rooms at the top.
    ‘Maybe not
ten
,’ Christy said. ‘But I have to admit there was a moment yesterday when I forgot we had this extra floor up here. It was more than my mind could process. How weird is that?’
    ‘Very weird,’ her father said drily. ‘Some might say immoral when you think there are families in this city living six to a room. Or no room at all, just one of those halfway-house hellholes, waiting for permanent accommodation.’As a teacher at a Croydon comprehensive with police officers at the gates and social workers on speed dial, he had always been going to draw comparisons, but not at the expense of letting his daughter and son-in-law know how delighted he was by their remarkable leap up the property ladder. It would be like refusing to be thrilled by magic.
    ‘You could always get a lodger up here; you’d hardly notice they were there, would you?’ He was thinking, possibly, of the five-figure sum – pretty much all her parents had to spare – he’d lent them in that scramble to amass the funds for completion. ‘If you ever fall on hard times,’ he added good-humouredly.
    ‘I’ll remember that,’ Christy said.
    Joe’s parents were united with hers in their stupefaction. ‘You’re getting a bit posh for us now,’ they told Joe, and Christy saw the flush of pride in their faces.
    ‘Oh, that’ll never happen,’ he said, grinning. ‘Will it, Christy? We’ll never crack the enigma of gracious living.’
    ‘Not while we’re with each other, anyway,’ she said. ‘Maybe in our second marriages?’ How she loved seeing their families together in the new house. She was already having visions of big noisy Christmases, everyone gathered in the living room like something out of
It’s a Wonderful Life
(there was a lot more furniture in these visions; as things stood, most of the family would have to cram together in the window seat).
    ‘What must this other couple have been like?’ Joe’s mother marvelled on entering one of their three glittering bathrooms, the master en suite (‘master en suite’: it was like a foreign vocabulary). ‘Were they Russian or something?’
    Joe chuckled. ‘No, but Amber Baby had
very
expensive tastes.’
    ‘Amber Baby?’
    ‘That’s what we call her, don’t we, Christy?’
    ‘We do.’
    Closer inspection of the dragonfly key ring had revealed the