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saw him this morning when I was out with Issy. He’s aged since he retired. Going into the churchyard he was with a cop and a lady cop and then on to take a look at the Vicarage, I reckon. Well, I don’t know but that’s what it looked like, didn’t it, Issy?’
    ‘Dada, Dada,’ said Isabella, repeating the only word she so far knew.
    ‘That’s my sweetheart,’ said Jason, kissing the top of her head. ‘She’s talking very early. It’s a sign of intelligence. I’ll not be surprised if she gets to uni, maybe Oxford. Unless she does modelling. Why not both?’
    No one argued. This was a subject on which they were unanimous. ‘Time for bed, my honey,’ said Jason and took her upstairs himself. ‘Mum will come up and say goodnight.’
    Left alone with Nicky, Maxine reinstituted the bickering. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are, getting hold of a fella like him. You don’t have to do a stroke for that baby.’
    ‘Leave it out, will you?’
    Nicky went off upstairs to say goodnight to Isabella and without waiting for either of them to come down, Maxine started for home. On the corner of Peck Road and Khouri Avenue (named after a local council leader of Asian parentage) she met Jeremy Legg who was Jason and Nicky’s landlord. They had never been on good terms – no one except his girlfriend was on good terms with Legg – but they spoke, they even maintained a show of politeness.
    ‘Good evening,’ said Maxine. It was a form of greeting uttered in a scathing tone that she wouldn’t have used to anyone else.
    ‘Hiya,’ said Legg. ‘Been to see your son, have you?’
    ‘There’s a broken window in the front bedroom needs seeing to. Little job for you when you can spare the time from your busy schedule.’
    Everyone knew that Legg, who had suffered from a mysterious back complaint since he was twenty-nine, subsisted on the Disability Living Allowance, his rents and his girlfiend’s income. ‘Tenant does repairs, not landlord,’ he said, remembering to limp a bit before getting into his car. He drove home to Stringfield and Fiona’s cottage.

CHAPTER THREE
    THE ONE PROPERTY Jeremy Legg owned was in Ladysmith Road and had been left him by his mother when she died five years before. This was let to an immigrant couple. His other house, the one in Peck Road, was not his at all but belonged to Kingsmarkham Borough Council. He had lived there for years with his wife, now long departed with another man. No more social housing was available in Kingsmarkham or the villages or was likely to be in future, so the sole recourse open to young couples who could only dream of getting a mortgage to buy a house, was to rent. The pretty cottage he lived in with Fiona Morrison belonged to her. They had met in a pub where Fiona was drinking whisky and Jeremy orange juice. As far as anyone knew, he didn’t drink or smoke while she did both. She had drunk so much that night that he’d had to drive her home. He was quite a bit older than her, nothing special to look at, and he had that limp which came and went when it suited him, but she fell in love with him. That also suited Jeremy. If he could move in with her he could let the Peck Road house he was living in on the Muriel Campden Estate. He could and he did.
    Fiona had it all worked out. She wanted a baby and at forty-one she reckoned she had about three years left in which to conceive. Jeremy was the ideal partner and putative father of this dream-child. He had his Disability Living Allowance plus two lots of rent, each of which amounted to about twice as much as the DLA, he had a car and – this was as important as anything – he stayed at home, was a house husband, idle, and had no desire ever to get a job. And as a result, she could return to her work as an optician’s receptionist after the baby was born. In a property-owning nation, as the United Kingdom once was and possibly still was, it was inevitable that a great many people lived in houses or flats which