She got her job back at the pub. The girl from the City of Paris had apparently disappeared to the Texas Rib Shack three shifts after she’d started. Tips were better and there was no Stewart Pringle making random grabs at your backside.

‘No loss. She didn’t know not to talk during the guitar solo of “Layla”,’ Des mused. ‘What kind of barmaid doesn’t know to keep quiet during the guitar solo of “Layla”?’

She cleaned four days a week with Nathalie, and avoided number two Beachfront. She preferred jobs like scrubbing ovens, where she was unlikely to accidentally look through the window and catch sight of it, with its jaunty blue and white for-sale placard. If Nathalie thought she was behaving a little oddly, she didn’t say anything.

She put an advert in the local newsagent’s offering her services as a handy-woman. No Job Too Small. Her first job came in less than twenty-four hours later: putting up a bathroom cabinet for a pensioner in Aden Crescent. The old woman was so happy with the result that she gave Jess a five-pound tip. She said she didn’t like having men in her house and that in the forty-two years she had been married to her husband he had only ever seen her with her good wool vest on. She recommended Jess to a friend in the sheltered housing who had a washer needed replacing and a carpet gripper. Two other jobs followed, also pensioners. Jess sent a second instalment of cash to number two Beachfront. Nathalie dropped it in. The for-sale sign was still up.

Nicky was the only one in the family who seemed genuinely cheerful. It was as if the blog had given him a new sense of purpose. He wrote it most evenings, posting about Norman’s progress, chatting with new friends. He met up with one of them IRL, he said, translating that for Jess: ‘In Real Life’. He was all right, he said. And, no, not like that. He wanted to go to open days at two different colleges. He was speaking to his form tutor about how to apply for a hardship grant. He’d looked it up. He smiled, often several times a day and without being bribed, dropped to his knees with pleasure when he saw Norman wagging his tail in the kitchen, waved unselfconsciously at Lola, the girl from number forty-seven, who, Jess noticed, had dyed her hair the exact same shade as his, and played an air-guitar solo in the front room. He walked into town frequently, his skinny legs seeming to gain a longer stride, his shoulders not exactly back, but not slumped, defeated, as they had been weeks earlier. Once he wore a yellow T-shirt.

‘Where’s the laptop gone?’ Jess said, when she went into his room one afternoon and found him working away on their old computer.

‘I took it back.’ He shrugged. ‘Nathalie let me in.’

‘Did you see him?’ she said, before she could stop herself.

Nicky’s eyes slid away. ‘Sorry. His stuff’s there but it’s all boxed up. I’m not sure he stays there any more.’

It shouldn’t have been a surprise but as Jess made her way downstairs she found herself holding her stomach with both hands, as if she had been winded.

38.

Ed

His sister accompanied him to court several weeks later, on a day that woke still and hot, and the traffic crawled as if the heat had slowed the very movement in London’s veins. Ed had told his mother not to come too. By that time they were never sure, day by day, whether it was a good idea to leave Dad for any length of time. As they crawled across London, his sister leant forwards in her taxi seat, her fingers tapping impatiently on her knee, her jaw set in a tight line. She was clearly even tenser than he was. Ed felt strangely, perversely relaxed. The weight of other, future, losses hung over him, making today’s troubles seem trivial.

The courtroom was almost empty. Thanks to the unholy combination of a particularly grisly murder at the Old Bailey, a political love scandal, and the public meltdown of a young British actress, the two-day trial had not registered as a big news story, just enough for an agency court reporter and a trainee from the Financial Times. And Ed had already pleaded guilty, against the advice of his legal team.

Deanna Lewis’s claims of innocence had been somewhat undermined by the evidence of a friend, a banker, who had apparently informed her in no uncertain terms that what she was about to do was indeed insider trading. The friend was able to produce an email she had sent informing Deanna as much, and one in return from Deanna accusing the friend of being ‘picky’, ‘annoying’, and ‘frankly a little too involved in my business. Don’t you want me to have a chance to move forward?’

Ed stood and watched the court reporter scribbling away, and the solicitors leaning in to each other, pointing to bits of paper, and it all felt oddly anti-climactic.

‘I am minded that you confessed your guilt and that, as far as Miss Lewis and yourself are concerned, this appears to be isolated criminal behaviour, motivated by factors other than money. This cannot be said of Michael Lewis.’

The FSA, it turned out, had tracked other ‘suspicious’ trades Deanna’s brother had made, spread bets and options.

‘It is necessary, however, that we send a signal that this kind of behaviour is completely unacceptable, however it may have come about. It destroys investors’ confidence in the honest movement in markets, and it weakens the whole structure of our financial system. For that reason I am bound to ensure that the level of punishment is still a clear deterrent to anyone who may believe this to be a “victimless” crime.’

Ed stood in the dock trying to work out what to do with his face and was fined £750,000 and costs, and given a six-month sentence, suspended for twelve months.