Saffyre Maddox might be dead and their neighbour, who might have killed her, could have killed Georgia, too.

But now the police have him in custody and they are safe: they are making a cake.

33

SAFFYRE

Christmas Day last year was good.

Lee came over with the family, Aaron cooked amazing food, a mix of British Christmas fare and things I’ve been told my grandma used to cook for Christmas lunch: baked macaroni, sweet potato pie. We drank rum punch with umbrellas and tinsel in it and did karaoke with the machine Lee brought over and the tree looked amazing and we put a fake fire on the plasma screen and it really was, in spite of Granddad not being there, a proper Christmas Day.

I was so fat and tipsy and sleepy after that I didn’t even really want to go outdoors. I felt quite grounded that evening with my big belly in my comfy chair on the eighth floor. I just sat and rubbed my stomach and watched my little cousins playing with their new things. I’d spent months and months by then following Roan and his family and his lover around and to spend a day connecting to people in a real and proper way felt like magic. Maybe if I could have held on to that feeling, the sense that I belonged in that world, that I was meant to be there and not somewhere else, then maybe everything else would have been different.

But for one day at least, I was chilled, I was present. It was nice.

The day after Boxing Day I started getting really antsy again. The flat was so hot and there was this awful feeling of confinement in the block, like we were all gerbils locked up in tiny boxes. The sun was out and I put on my snow boots with my pyjama bottoms, tied back my hair and threw on my Puffa. I looked rough but I didn’t care, I just needed to get out.

I called in on Jasmin. She looked rough too. We both laughed about how shit we looked, how fat we were. She came out for a walk with me and we went to Starbucks on Finchley Road and sat on the sofa there just chatting. I had half an eye on the big plate-glass window on to the street, just in case I saw anyone I knew walk past. Then she said she had to get back because she had family staying and she was supposed to be around and I walked her home and then it was already starting to get dark, that stupid moment in the middle of winter when you’ve only been awake a few hours and the sky suddenly turns dirty yellow and the bare trees turn into black skeletons and night-time lands bang slap middle of the day.

I turned and looked back at the estate, at the top floors of my block. All the windows glowed different colours and flashed with Christmas lights. It looked warm up there. It looked pretty.

I shivered slightly and, instead of going home, I turned and walked up the hill towards the village.

Hampstead village looked like a life-size snow globe at this time of year with all the trees wrapped up in white lights. I liked walking up there for the exercise really; it’s uphill the whole way from my flat so it’s good aerobically. After two days sitting in my flat eating Ferrero Rocher it felt great to have the cold air passing in and out of my lungs, to feel my blood whooshing through my veins. I should have run it really, but I’m built for many things and running is not one of them.

It was busy in the village: the sales had started already and the shoppers were out in force. I peered into shop windows at things I couldn’t afford and didn’t need. The shop for yoga mummies with the hundred-pound leggings. Designer tile shops, designer paint shops, a shop selling just one brand of cooking pan in about twenty different colours: Le Creuset. I didn’t quite understand Hampstead, but I liked it.

I was about to head right up to the other end of the village, to the very top of the hill where the air is thinner, where the Heath begins with its raggedy entryways and endless vistas and its futuristic view of the pointy glass towers all the way over the other side of London, and I turned, and as I turned I saw that I was face-to-face with a man and that man was Roan.

I wasn’t wearing my hood up so he recognised me immediately and for a tiny beat it was a bit awkward. He was wearing a cloth cap and a padded coat and was carrying a huge Reiss carrier bag with the word ‘Sale’ printed on it in red. He hadn’t shaved and looked kind of bizarre.

He said, ‘Hi, Saffyre. Wow, how are you?’

‘I’m good. I’m good,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

He glanced down at his big bag. ‘I’m great. Just exchanging a gift that didn’t fit.’

‘From your wife?’ I said, before I could check myself.

‘Yes,’ he said, and I noticed his smile set like cement. ‘Yes. Too big. Unfortunately.’

I nodded encouragingly and smiled.

‘And you?’ he said. ‘You’re OK?’

‘Yeah. Well, my granddad died.’ I shrugged. ‘A couple of months ago. So that was bad.’

‘Oh, Saffyre, I’m really sorry to hear that.’

‘You know,’ I said. ‘One of those things, isn’t it? People die.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, people die, that is true. But it is horrible. I’m very sorry for your loss. I know how close you all were. How are you coping?’

‘Well, you know, in some ways it’s easier? Because Aaron doesn’t have to do so much cooking and caring and stuff. But in other ways, it’s shit really, because my family is just too small now. It’s too, too small.’

I said this lightly, like maybe it was a joke, but I think it came out more emotional than I intended because Roan put his hand on my arm and looked at me with great concern and said, ‘Do you think you need to talk this through with someone?’

I thought, Ha, yeah, right, because you did such a good job of fixing me last time I came to you broken, didn’t you?

But I kind of laughed it off. ‘No, honestly. It’s all good. Just takes a bit of getting used to.’ Then there was a brief pause and I said, ‘How’s the family?’

He made a weird shape with his mouth and nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘We’re all good.’

And then – and there’s no point telling me that I shouldn’t have done this because it’s too late now, I did it, it’s done – I looked him hard in the eye and I said, ‘How’s Alicia?’

Strike me down dead. Whatever. He deserved it. Standing there in his poncey cap with a coat in a bag that his wife bought him because she stupidly thought he was her loyal husband, not some horny sex beast.

‘Sorry?’ he said, and I could see the panic swimming about in his eyes, like tiny tadpoles.

‘How’s Alicia?’ I asked again, and then I got the adrenaline rush to my heart as my brain finally caught up with what my mouth was doing. ‘Your colleague.’

He nodded, then shook his head and said, ‘Sorry? But how do you know Alicia? Have you been back to the clinic?’

I just shook my head and smiled at him.

I could see him scrambling for the next thing to say or do and I decided that now was the time to step away from the hand grenade I’d just unpinned. I said, ‘Anyway, nice seeing you, Roan. Have a happy holiday.’

He turned as I left and said, ‘But, Saffyre – what did you mean by that?’

‘Can’t stop. Must dash.’

I walked that last leg of the hill at about a hundred miles an hour. Dainty trees full of twinkly white pom poms. Restaurants full of rich people. I passed art galleries, estate agents, nail bars with pink chandeliers. It was properly dark by the time I got to the top. I stood with my hands on my hips and looked down, my breath coming in and out of me so loudly I could hear it.

34

Owen is in a room with pale blue walls, a plate-glass window on one side, a tall thin window on the other with opaque, textured glass and three vertical white metal bars.

In front of him are DI Currie and another detective, a man called DI Jack Henry. He’s wearing a really nice blue suit with a tight white shirt underneath. He has blond hair, like DI Currie, and is about the same age as her; they look strangely like a couple, as if they’ve just ordered pizzas in a branch of Zizzi’s and are trying to think of something to talk about.

‘So, Owen.’ DI Currie smiles at him, running a fingertip over her paperwork. ‘I’m really grateful to you for agreeing to come at such short notice and for being so cooperative. Thank you.’

Owen says, ‘That’s OK.’

‘We’ll try to keep this as short as possible. I’m sure you’ve got things you need to be getting on with. But we do, just for your information, have a warrant to keep you for questioning for twenty-four hours. So if there’s anyone you need to talk to, just let us know and we can contact them for you. OK?’

She smiles again.

Owen nods.

‘So,’ she begins, after setting the machine to record. ‘Owen. Let’s go back to the night of February the fourteenth, if you don’t mind. I know we’ve already spoken about this, but just for the sake of our recordings, so we have it on record. You went out that evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘And where did you go?’

‘I went to an Italian. On Shaftesbury Avenue.’

‘And who were you with?’

‘I was with a woman called Deanna Wurth. On a date.’

‘So, you had a drink?’

‘I had a few drinks.’