The wind blows itself out, and dawn comes to the window cold and still in a clear gold-green. Cal has been dozing off and on, in between watching the fire die down and checking on Trey by the light of his phone. As far as he can tell, she never budged once all night, even when he got close enough to make sure she was still breathing.

In the first light Lena takes shape, curled up in the armchair with her face buried in her elbow, her hair a pale scribble. Outside, the small birds are starting to toss out scraps of morning conversation, and the rooks are bitching at them to shut up. Cal is sore at every point where his bones pressed into the floor, and a lot of points in between.

He gets up, as quietly as he can, and heads to the sink to fill the kettle. He’s light-headed with tiredness, but not in a fuzzy way; the chill and the dawn give everything a spellbound, airy lucidity. In his garden the rabbits are chasing each other in circles through the dew-wet grass.

Lena stirs in the armchair and sits up, arching her back and scrunching up her face. She looks baffled. “Morning,” Cal says.

“Ah, Jaysus,” Lena says, shielding her eyes. “If you’re planning on having guests on the regular, you need curtains.”

“I’d need a lot more’n that,” Cal says, keeping his voice down. “How you feeling?”

“Too old for this carry-on, is how I’m feeling. How about you?”

“Like I got hit by a truck. Remember back when we’d crash on people’s floors just for kicks?”

“I do, yeah, but I was an awful eejit back then. I’d rather be old and have sense.” She stretches, hugely and with appreciation. “Is Trey still asleep?”

“Yeah. I figure the longer she sleeps, the better. Can I make you some breakfast?” Cal finds himself hoping she says yes. Lena may not be the most accommodating person in the world, but she alters the balance of the house in a way he likes. “I got toast with bacon and eggs, or toast without bacon and eggs.”

Lena grins. “Ah, no. I’d better head. I’ve to get ready for work, and I’ve to feed the dogs first, let them out. Nellie’ll be going mental. She loses the head if I’m out past bedtime; by now she’s probably et half the furniture.” She unfurls herself from the chair and starts folding the duvet. “Will I call by here on my way in to work? Bring Trey home?”

“I’m not sure,” Cal says. He thinks about what kind of scary it would take, to make a mother do that to her kid. For a second, before he can turn his mind away, he wonders what it would have taken to make him or Donna do that to Alyssa. “I’d rather get things cleared up a little bit first.”

Lena tosses the folded duvet over the back of the armchair. “Here was me hoping by morning you’d have got sense,” she says.

“I’m not gonna do anything stupid.”

Lena’s glance says this is a matter of opinion, but she doesn’t comment. She pulls her hair band off her wrist and twists her hair back into its ponytail. “So I’m not bringing her home.”

“Maybe later. OK if I see how the day goes, give you a call in a while?”

“Away you go. Have fun.”

“If I needed you to stay here one more night,” Cal says, “would you consider it? I’d run into town and buy an air mattress, so you wouldn’t be back on that chair.”

Lena startles him by bursting out laughing. “You,” she says, shaking her head, “you’re some tulip, d’you know that? And your timing is shite. Come back to me later, once the aches and pains wear off, and we’ll see.” She pulls on her shoes and her jacket and heads for the door.

Cal waits till he hears her car drive away. Then he takes a walk around his garden. He can’t find any sign of intruders, but then he wouldn’t either way. The evidence of the night’s wind is everywhere. Leaves are scattered lavishly across the grass and banked high against walls and hedges, and the trees have a raw, defiant bareness. Under his windows, the earth has been scoured smooth.

He goes back indoors and starts cooking breakfast. The smell of frying bacon brings Trey out of the bedroom, barefoot and crumpled. Her fat lip has gone down some, but the eye is even more spectacular in daylight, and there’s an ugly bruise on her cheekbone that Cal didn’t notice before. Her hoodie and her jeans are crusted with patches and smears of dried blood. Cal looks at her and has no idea what to do about her. The thought of sending her out of this house makes him want to barricade everything and spend his time with his gun pointing out a window, in case someone comes for her.

“How you doing?” he asks.

“Shite. Hurts everywhere.”

“Well, I took that for granted,” Cal says. The fact that she’s walking and talking fills him up with a relief that makes it hard to breathe. “I meant apart from that. You sleep OK?”

“Yeah.”

“You hungry?”

The kid looks like she wants to say no, but the smell is too much for her. “Yeah. Starving.”

“Breakfast’ll be ready in a minute. Sit down there.”

Trey sits, yawning and flinching as the yawn stretches her lip. She watches Cal while he turns the bacon and butters the toast. The way she’s sitting, with her shoulders high and too much weight on her feet, reminds him of the way she used to stand when she first started coming around: ready to run.

“You want another painkiller?” he asks.

“Nah.”

“Nah? Anything hurt worse than last night?”

“Nah. I’m grand.”

With her face messed up, Cal finds it even harder than usual to tell what’s going on in her head. “Here you go,” he says, bringing the plates to the table. “Cut it up small, and don’t let it touch that lip. The salt’ll sting.”

Trey ignores that and attacks the food, still keeping a wary eye on Cal. Her hand is better; she holds the fork clumsily, trying not to bend her fingers, but she’s using it.

“Miss Lena just left a few minutes back,” Cal says. “She’s got work. She might be back later, depending.”

Trey says brusquely, “Sorry I came here. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“No,” Cal says. “Don’t be sorry. You did right.”

“Nah. You told me not to be coming around any more.”

All of Cal’s relationships, which seemed perfectly straightforward and harmonious last night, appear to have got themselves out of joint while he wasn’t looking. Never mind Brendan Reddy: the real mystery to which Cal would love an answer is how, while doing everything right as far as he can tell, he somehow manages to fuck everything up.