I don’t understand why I had just got used to sleeping and now I lie awake listening for non-existent sounds downstairs, and how now when I want to go to the shop to buy a paper or some sweets I feel sick again and have to fight the urge to look over my shoulder.

I don’t understand how a big, useless, soppy dog, who has basically never done anything worse than dribble on everyone, had to lose an eye and get his insides rearranged just because he tried to protect the person he loves.

Mostly, I don’t understand how the bullies and the thieves and the people who just destroy everything – the arseholes – get away with it. The boys who punch you in your kidneys for your dinner money, and the police who think it’s funny to treat you like you’re an idiot, and the kids who take the piss out of anyone who isn’t just like them, whether they’re posh and at a maths competition, or a stupid, ignorant idiot who doesn’t know the difference between a username and a password. Or the dads who walk right out and just start afresh somewhere new that smells of Febreze with a woman who drives her own Toyota and owns a three-piece with no marks on it and laughs at all their stupid jokes like they’re God’s gift and not actually a slimeball who lied to all the people who loved him for two whole years. Two whole years.

Mum always told us that good things happen to good people. Guess what? She doesn’t say that any more.

I’m sorry if this blog has just got really depressing but that’s how our life is right now. My family, the eternal losers. It’s not a story, really, is it? It’s a flipping cautionary tale.

35.

Jess

The police came on the fourth day after Norman’s accident. Jess watched the officer coming up the garden path through the living-room window and for one stupid minute she thought she had come to tell her Norman had died. A young woman; red hair pulled back in a neat pony tail. One Jess hadn’t seen before.

She was coming in response to reports about an RTA, she said, as she opened the door.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Jess said, walking back down the hall to the kitchen. ‘The driver’s going to sue us for damaging his car.’ It was Nigel who had warned her this might happen. She had actually started to laugh when he said it.

The officer looked at her notebook. ‘Well, not at the moment, at least. The damage to his car seems to be minimal. And there have been conflicting statements as to whether he was exceeding the speed limit. But we’ve had various reports about what happened in the lead-up to the accident and I was wondering if you could clarify a few things?’

‘What’s the point?’ Jess said, turning back to the washing-up. ‘You lot never take any notice.’

She knew how she sounded: like half the residents of this estate – antagonistic, braced for confrontation, hard-done-by. She no longer cared. But the officer was too new, too keen, to play that game.

‘Well, do you think you could tell me what happened anyway? I’ll only take five minutes of your time.’

So Jess told her, in the flat tones of someone who no longer expected to be believed. She told her about the Fishers, and their history with them, and the fact that she now had a daughter who was afraid to play in her own garden, even though Jess had repaired the hole in the fence. She told her about her daft cow-sized dog who was racking up bills at the vet’s roughly equivalent to if she had bought him a suite in a luxury hotel. She told her how her son’s sole aim now was to get as far from this town as possible, and how, thanks to the Fishers having made a misery of his exam year at school, this was unlikely to happen.

The officer didn’t look bored. She stood, leaning against the kitchen cabinets, and taking notes. Then she asked Jess to show her the fence. Jess didn’t bother going outside. ‘There,’ she said, pointing through the window. ‘You can see where I’ve mended it, by the lighter wood. And the accident, if that’s what we’re calling it, happened about fifty yards up on the right.’ She watched her walk outside, and turned back to the sink. Aileen Trent, pulling her shopping trolley, gave her a cheery wave over the hedge. Then, when she registered who was in the garden, she ducked her head and walked swiftly the other way.

PC Kenworthy was out there for almost ten minutes. Jess almost forgot about her. She was unloading the washing-machine when the officer let herself back in.

‘Can I ask you a question, Mrs Thomas?’ she said, closing the back door behind her.

‘That’s your job,’ Jess said.

‘You’ve probably been through this a dozen times already. But your CCTV camera. Does it have any film in it?’

Jess watched the footage three times after PC Kenworthy called her into the station, sitting beside her on a plastic chair in Interview Suite Three. It chilled her every time: the tiny figure, her sequined sleeves glinting in the sun, walking slowly along the edge of the screen, pausing to push her spectacles up her nose. The car that slows, the door that opens. One, two, three of them. Tanzie’s body language. The slight step backwards, the nervous glance behind, back down the road. The raised hands. And then they’re on her and Jess cannot watch.

‘I’d say that was pretty conclusive evidence, Mrs Thomas. And on good-quality footage. The CPS will be delighted,’ she said cheerfully, and it took Jess several seconds to grasp that she was serious about this. That somebody was actually taking them seriously.

At first Fisher had denied it, of course. He said they were ‘having a joke’ with Tanzie. ‘But we have her testimony. And two witnesses who have come forward. And we have screenshots of Jason Fisher’s Facebook account discussing how he was going to do it.’