Fuck it, he told himself. I can’t go and see her. I just can’t.

Why should I?

What would I even say?

He walked from one end of his empty house to the other, his footsteps echoing on the wooden floors, his fist tight around the notes.

What kind of a fool would forgive?

He stared out of the window at the sea and wished, suddenly, that he had gone to jail. He wished that his mind had been filled with the immediate physical problems of safety, logistics, survival.

He didn’t want to think about her.

He didn’t want to see her face every time he closed his eyes.

He would go. He would leave here, and get a new place, and a new job, and he would start again. And he would leave all this behind. And things would be easier.

A shrill noise – a ringtone he didn’t recognize – shattered the silence. His phone, recalibrated with Nicky’s preferences. He stared at it, at the rhythmically glowing screen. Caller unknown. After five rings, when the sound became unbearable, he finally snatched it up.

‘Is Mrs Thomas there?’

Ed held the phone briefly away from himself, as if it were radioactive. ‘Is this a joke?’ he said, putting it back to his ear.

A nasal voice, sneezing: ‘Sorry. Awful hay fever. Have I got the right number? Parents of Costanza Thomas?’

‘What – who is this?’

‘My name’s Andrew Prentiss. I’m calling from the Olympiad.’

It took him a moment to collect his thoughts. He sat down on the stairs.

‘The Olympiad? I’m sorry – how did you get this number?’

‘It was on our contacts list. You left it during the exam. I have got the right number?’

Ed remembered Jess’s phone being out of credit. She must have given the number of the phone he’d given to Nicky instead. His head dropped into his free hand. Someone up there had quite a sense of humour.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, thank goodness. We’ve been trying you for days. Did you not pick up any of my messages? I’m calling about the exam … The thing is, we discovered an anomaly when we were marking the papers. The first one contained a misprint, which made the algorithm question impossible to solve.’

‘What?’

He spoke as if reciting a well-worn series of statements. ‘We noticed it after the final results were collated. The fact that every single student failed the first question was a giveaway. It wasn’t picked up on initially as we had several different people marking. Anyway, we’re very sorry – and we’d like to offer your daughter the chance to resit. We’re doing the whole thing again.’

‘Resit the Olympiad? When?’

‘Well, that’s the thing. It’s this afternoon. It had to be a weekend as we couldn’t expect students to miss school to do it. We’ve actually been trying to reach you all week on this number but we got no response. I only tried you the one last time on the off-chance.’

‘You’re expecting her to get to Scotland in … four hours?’

Mr Prentiss paused to sneeze again. ‘No, not Scotland this time. We had to take the space available to us. But looking at your details I see this might work out better for you, seeing as you live on the south coast. The event is scheduled to take place in Basingstoke. Are you happy to pass the message on to Costanza?’

‘Uh …’

‘Thanks so much. I suppose these things are only to be expected in our first year. Still, one more down! I only have one more entrant to reach! The rest of the info is on the website if you need it.’

An almighty sneeze. And the phone went dead.

And Ed was left in his empty house, staring at the handset.

40.

Jess

Jess had been trying to persuade Tanzie to open the door. The school counsellor had told her it would be a good way to start rebuilding her confidence in the outside world, as long as she was in the house. She would answer the door, safe in the knowledge that Jess was behind her. That confidence would slowly stretch to other people, to being in the garden. It would be a stepping stone. These things were incremental.

It was a nice theory. If Tanzie would only agree to do it.

‘Door. Mum.’

Her voice carried over the sound of the cartoons. Jess was wondering when to get tough with her on the television-watching. She had calculated last week that Tanzie now spent upwards of five hours a day lying on the sofa. ‘She has had a shock,’ Mrs Liversedge had said. ‘But I think she’d feel better sooner if she was doing something a little more constructive.’

‘I can’t answer it, Tanze,’ she called down. ‘I’m standing here with my hands in a bowlful of bleach.’

Her voice, a whine, a new development these last days: ‘Can’t you get Nicky to open it?’

‘Nicky’s gone to the shop.’

Silence.

The sound of canned laughter echoed up the stairs. Jess could feel, if not see, the presence of whoever was waiting at the door, the shadow behind the glass. She wondered if it was Aileen Trent. She had arrived uninvited four times over the last two weeks with ‘unmissable bargains’ for the children. She wondered if she’d heard about Nicky’s blog money. Everyone on the estate seemed to know about it.

Jess yelled down, ‘Look, I’ll stand at the top of the stairs. All you have to do is open it.’

The doorbell rang again, twice.

‘Come on, Tanze. It’s not going to be anything bad. Look, put Norman on the lead and bring him with you.’