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Lucy was like this, fired up by righteous ire, than retreating further into the shell she had built around herself since Jack died. Even before that, she had often thought privately. Remembering Lucy’s attempt to be the perfect wife to Ethan, to conform to what he and his family wanted, as if she wasn’t good enough. Even seeming to accept it when Ethan ran off with someone else. It was good to see a glimpse of the old Lucy, of the spunky young woman she had been before Ethan, before Jack, but this was a step too far. This was dangerous.
    â€˜It’s inflammatory, Lucy, it could stir up no end of trouble. There have already been protests; I saw them on the news.’ Danielle saw everything on the news, or through her twitching living-room curtains. If she didn’t know everything that was going on in the world around her, she didn’t feel safe.
    â€˜Good,’ Lucy said defiantly, but her eyes strayed towards the newspaper lying like a time bomb on her mother’s Cath Kidston tablecloth. The picture of her took up most of the front page and the nervous-looking photographer had managed to capture the anger in her eyes, the firm set to the jaw, so that she looked like a crusading Amazon, with her light brown hair tumbling around her face. It was a good picture, she thought with a touch of pride.
    There was no doubting that the headline the
Sun
had chosen to run above it, however, was nothing short of incendiary. ‘If the government won’t do something I will.’ Not that Lucy had any real idea what, if anything, she could do, but it had felt good to sound off to the whippet of a reporter with the greedy eyes who had so eagerly spurred Lucy on.
    The interview took up five pages; mostly Lucy talking about the toll Jack’s death had taken on her life, but then at the end, when the reporter had asked her if she had a message for the hundreds of people currently hurling abuse outside the City Hall, Lucy’s reply had been a flippant ‘Tell them to shout louder.’ In front of her in black and white, she could see her mother’s point.
    And yet, that newly awakened angry voice inside her whispered, why shouldn’t they carry on? Why shouldn’t taxpayers and voters and any citizen in fact have the right to raise their voices against such a gross miscarriage of justice? Parents who feared for their own children knowing there was a vicious child killer on the loose? Lucy felt something burning in her that had lain dormant for too long. She had needed to speak out. If that caused trouble, well whose fault was that?
She
hadn’t released Terry Prince. The hot wave of hatred that came over her at the shape of his name in her mind made her bow her head and clasp her hands together as if to contain it.
    Under the table Ricky reached for her hand and squeezed it and Lucy smiled at him, grateful. Sometimes Ricky was older than his years, and she drank him in for a moment; his handsome face and lanky body, growing too fast but with the promise of filling out one day. A shame he insisted on covering the bloom of youth with a too-big baseball cap perched on his head and jeans that hung nearly to his crotch.
    â€˜I’m going out,’ he announced, breaking the tense silence, ‘I’m going to play Xbox at Tyler’s.’
    Lucy nodded. ‘Ring me…’
    â€˜â€¦when I get there and before I leave, yeah I know.’
    â€˜Do you want me to drive you?’
    Ricky scowled, his face showing exactly what he thought of that suggestion.
    â€˜No! It’s only round the corner.’
    He kissed her on the cheek and left, leaving Lucy staring after him until her mother’s words cut through the unease that would linger around her until Ricky returned.
    â€˜Don’t smother him, Lucy. He’s a young man now, in his own mind at least.’
    Lucy turned a stricken face to her mother, her blue eyes seeming to take over her whole