A mile away, Jenny Holloway stood in her friend’s parents’ kitchen, studying a list pinned to the fridge:

Orchids rem change gravel!

Fan heaters 10-12, 2-4, 6-10.

Check bubble wrap for holes EVERY DAY.

She was keeping an eye on things while Freddie’s parents were on a cruise, and they were very anxious about their greenhouse.

The kitchen – spacious, stylish, clean, was normally her favourite place to be in the house – but all night she’d suffered through various shifting nightmares, had woken late, and was still unsettled. She pulled a painful brush through her tangled curls and smeared on some tinted moisturiser that promised on the tube to make her look Radiant, Rested and Rejuvenated. It didn’t work. A slightly browner face frowned from the mirror, blinked slowly, frowned. She dabbed concealer on the small bruise on her chin.

She put on Freddie’s old parka and a big fur hat with lots of flaps and pockets that Graham – Freddie’s father – had bought on a recent holiday to Crimea. Looking in the mirror again, she almost laughed. She looked like a caricature of a teenage runaway. Freddie despaired of her dress sense at the best of times, referring to it caustically as ‘Asylum Seeker Chic’. She took a photo and sent it to him with the caption: ‘Still got it!’

She took the shortcut through the church graveyard. Snow lay frozen in glittering, crusty crests over the gravestones; she paused to take a photo of a stone angel with an icicle dripping from its nose. She sent it to Freddie. He’d get a kick out of that.

After a while, the big detached houses close to the churchyard gave way to large semis and a neat heath used for cricket matches and picnics in the summer. Once upon a time, the heath had marked the very edge of the village, until the affordable housing section had been built next to it. Years later the houses were still roundly despised by ‘real’ villagers, who would gather in the shop or at parish council meetings to complain. Why did they have to be built here? Why not closer to the city, in one of those other, uglier, villages? They were such horrible little boxes, and the hills they backed onto was a popular spot for dog walkers, ramblers… having houses there ruined the peace, changed the ambience… couldn’t Something Be Done?

Eight years ago, Jenny and Sal had been one of the first families to move into one of those horrible little boxes. On the day they arrived they saw a rabbit, an actual wild rabbit! Sometimes there were foxes – not the mangy, scavenging beasts she’d seen in the city, but fluffy-tailed, plumply alert creatures. Sal said they must have their den in the hills somewhere, and they’d put out scraps for them to eat until Mrs Mondesir told them not to because they might end up going for her Jack Russell.

It had been their New Start, in a New House and a New School and, for a while, it had seemed like it might all work out…

Jenny didn’t see anyone that morning, and the only thing that passed her on the road was a police car.

‘I didn’t think anything of it,’ she told Freddie later.

At her mother’s front door, Jenny saw that the lid had come off the recycling bin. The empty bottles were very visible, only partially covered in snow. She quickly replaced the lid, hesitated, sighed and, riding a sudden wave of adrenaline, opened the door.

‘Mum?’

A freezing breeze caught the door lazily, slamming it almost shut, before catching on the latch. The TV was on in the living room – a tinny Jeremy Kyle berated an alcoholic in front of a baying crowd. She crossed the room quickly, and turned it off.

‘Mum?’ Her voice was louder now. ‘You in bed?’

Two drops of blood, as big as pennies, stained the carpet at the foot of the stairs and, on the bannister, like a sinister skid mark, was a smear of blood. More spots and drips of red on the wall ran vertically down to a broken picture frame resting on the stairs. Glass smashed into a starburst… a child perched on a donkey, huge grin, an ice cream in one chubby fist. Adrenaline hit again but, this time, she froze. Her stomach felt hollow, smoky. ‘Mum?’

And then an unfamiliar voice came from the kitchen. ‘Hello? Who’s there? You’d better come here, whoever you are.’

And Jenny turned slowly, each inch an eternity, eyes wide and heart bump-bump-bumping. The police officer stood next to the kitchen table.

‘I knew then that something very bad had happened,’ she told Freddie later.

They sat at the kitchen table. The policeman eyed the semicircle of dirty glasses and plates at the base of the table and tried to keep his clean uniformed elbows off the tabletop.

‘Your mother has been involved in an incident.’ His voice was soft. ‘Your neighbour next door was out walking her dog—’

‘Is she OK?’ Jenny asked.

He thought she meant Mrs Mondesir. ‘She’s had a shock but she’s being looked after next door. Can I ask—?’

Jenny started to turn. He caught her arm, and she struggled. ‘Let me go and see my mum!’ she shouted.

‘Miss Holloway? I’m going to need you to sit down. Please.’ His kind eyes were tired. His smile was sad. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that your mother has died.’

Jenny stared at him, nearly said something, but then seemed to deflate, empty out. She sat at the table like a puppet with its strings cut: eyes wide, mouth open. She asked: ‘How?’

A few words pierced the fog. ‘… found… field at the back. Must have slipped on the snow…’ Then he nodded at the glasses on the floor. ‘Drinking, was she?’

‘Yes,’ Jenny whispered.

‘Should she have been drinking?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Can I call anyone for you?’

‘What?’ Her face was wiped clean of expression, kabuki-like. ‘What did you say?’

‘Can I call someone for you? Brother or sister?’

‘I don’t have any.’ Her empty face stared, straight-ahead, at the back door, still open, squeaking. ‘There isn’t anyone.’

‘A friend?’

There was a long pause. Jenny spoke as if the words were being dredged up from the deep. ‘My friend Freddie. You can call him.’ And she gave him the number.

‘Did your mother have a partner? Boyfriend?’

Jenny flinched, then got up, slow as a sleepwalker. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

She stumbled up the stairs, past the bloodstains and the glass, to the tiny bathroom and there she crouched by the toilet bowl until there was a knock and an ‘Are you OK in there, Miss Holloway?’

‘I’m—’ She made a gagging sound. ‘No. I’m… I don’t know.’

‘We’ve called your friend. Why not come out now, if you’re feeling better?’ He sounded anxious.

Jenny stood up shakily, crossed to the basin. In the mirror, her fearful face rose like a yellowish moon; she splashed it with water. Your mother is dead, your mother is dead, slipped on the ice, in the cold. Your mother is dead. Dead in the snow like an animal.

‘Miss Holloway? I do need you to open the door now.’ There was an urgency in his voice.

‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry about me,’ she murmured at the mirror.

‘I want you to come out of the bathroom now. Can you do that for me?’

Your mother is dead your mother is dead your mother is dead.

‘Miss Holloway!’

She unlocked the door. Later she realised that he was probably scared she’d hurt herself in there. Taken an overdose, or cut her wrists or something.

As they walked down the stairs together, towards the smashed picture, he asked: ‘ Do you know what had happened here?

‘No.’ Jenny looked at the glass dazedly. ‘No idea.’

When Freddie arrived an hour or so later, the policeman seemed a little relieved to hand her over to someone else. Freddie gently coaxed her out of the chair, out of the house and into his waiting car, where he buckled her in like a child, and, like a child, she gazed at him with sudden piteous fear.

‘My mum died, Fred.’

‘Oh darling!’ He pulled her stiff body towards him in an awkward hug.

‘I don’t know what to do. What should I be doing?’ she whispered into his shoulder.

He didn’t answer. There was no answer. They drove back to his parents’ house, where the remains of Jenny’s breakfast were still on the kitchen table, there was still steam in the shower room, and everything was abnormally normal, strangely sane.