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have been hell to pay, and we didn’t want to name her after her grandmother. My mother’s given name is Morning Glory, known to everyone just as Glory.’
    ‘Oh.’ Lauren couldn’t think of any other comment to make. ‘Mine are Jade and Sholto – eight and ten – kids, that is. I do miss them when they’re away at school. This is Jade’s first term, so the house is very empty without her.’
    ‘Do they have to go away to school?’ asked Hal, who found the practice of sending small children away to boarding schools barbaric.
    ‘It’s the only way to get them a decent start in life these days,’ replied Lauren, then began to bluster. ‘Not that I mean … not with yours … I’m sure they had a perfectly good …’ She finally stuttered to a stop.
    ‘That’s OK, Lauren,’ declared Olivia, ‘I wouldn’t exactly say that ours have turned out as model young citizens. Sometimes I wish we’d had the money to send them somewhere decent, even if they were only day pupils.’
    Hal growled deep in the back of his throat in disapproval – he had been a state school teacher before he retired – before grabbing the neck of the bottle for a little top-up. A swig soon restored his goodwill, and he asked Lauren what she did when she wasn’t working.
    ‘I don’t do all that much, to be quite honest, what with Kenneth working away so much.’
    ‘You must do something,’ he persisted. ‘Lord, I’m still hungry.’
    As he went in search of the cake tin, Lauren shrugged and explained that her only interests were music and needlework, and she was lonely a lot of the time.
    ‘Well, if we’re off duty together, you’ve got a musical partner now.’
    ‘That’s true. I don’t suppose you play recorder, do you?’
    ‘Of course I do. I have a whole family of different sizes put away in a cupboard. Do you want to do that next time?
    ‘Next time?’
    ‘Of course. We’re a musical partnership now. If you want to be, that is,’ said Olivia, slightly unsure of herself in making this assumption.
    ‘I’d love to do that. We’ll have to compare rosters.’ Lauren was definitely getting bleary-eyed now, and put her head back, allowing her eyes to close.
    When Hal came back with a huge wedge of cake in one hand, his jaws working away on this second supper, Olivia pointed at her and said, ‘I think you ought to help her up to her room. We had a call out to a filthy accident just before we went off duty, but I think she’s relaxed enough now not to have nightmares.’
    Hal gathered the tall, unresisting figure, which was just beginning to emit small, polite snores, up into his arms and headed for the staircase. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, and you can tell me about that accident. I know that if you don’t get it off your chest you’ll have nightmares yourself.’

CHAPTER TWO
    The next morning didn’t start until 10.30 for any of them, when there were three pairs of bleary eyes at the breakfast table, and three jaded palates trying to enjoy the home-made marmalade spread liberally on their toast.
    ‘Do you think you could drop me home for a change of clothes before we go into the station?’ asked Lauren, anxiously hoping that she wasn’t being a nuisance – but she had after all slept in what she was wearing, with just a duvet put over her comatose body.
    ‘No problem,’ replied Olivia. ‘It’ll give me a chance to have a quick peek at where you live.’
    ‘Of course. I’ll give you the guided tour, and just hope we don’t run into Gerda – she’s the au pair I don’t particularly get on with. Maybe she’ll be out shopping, or whatever it is she does most of the time now there are no children to look after.’
    ‘Great! I love looking at other people’s houses, although some of the ones we visit in our job aren’t exactly of the ideal home variety, are they?’
    After several cups of coffee and a couple of painkillers, Olivia declared herself safe to drive, and they bade goodbye to Hal for a