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tests. They’ll be examining the body. Awful thought. Alys had a lovely face, you know? I hate to think of them examining her body, stretched out and totally naked. Cutting her with a scalpel. Taking samples. I hate it.”
    I thought about both of them. The Hollingberrys. Alys has wanted to dance, so Brice spent a night on the Tor even though he thought it was “purgatory.” How must he feel about that now?
    â€œI can’t believe it only happened today.” I stoppered the light, folding my hands over my eyes. “It seems years have gone past. Decades. And seconds, at the same time.”
    â€œFucking unbelievable,” said Dennon. “Come here, sis.”
    He put his arms all round me.

six
    laura
    I got home around eight the following morning. It had come onto rain in the night. The brilliance of the sun’s zenith had passed. It was the twenty-second of June already. I felt something wrench, deep inside. It was almost physical, as if I’d torn a hole in my body. Death and sadness.
    I needed Rey. I reached for my phone. I put it down again. He’d be on his way to Bridgwater Police Station to start his day as detective inspector. As soon as he walked into his office, the pressure would begin. He would not be pleased to have a call from his girlfriend.
    Girlfriend. That’s what I was. The girl he dated. The girl he came round and bonked when he had a spare evening.
    For quite some time now, that hadn’t been enough for me. I wasn’t pushing him; I wasn’t even mentioning it, but I wanted more. Rey lived in a microscopic studio flat—what was the point in that? He could move in with me whenever he liked. I had two bedrooms—the spare one could be his den (if we cleared it up a bit), or office, or whatever coppers need in their life.
    I hadn’t asked, and he never raised the subject. I don’t think he ever considered it. The extent of our relationship was the toothbrush he kept in my bathroom.
    Usually, I left the phoning to him. I knew he would call me; that or turn up on my doorstep after work, holding a couple of bottles of Merlot. He initiated the moves and I let him, because cops worked antisocial hours and had their heads totally immersed in the job, and because I was afraid that a nagging girlfriend might quickly become an ex-girlfriend .
    I went out into the garden with the hens’ breakfast. I stood in the rain, letting it trickle over my face. I wanted something to soothe me, cool me. Alys’s death was a heartache. I touched my neck, half expecting to feel an open sore, my throat felt so raw.
    The cock, Kaiser, didn’t come near me as I checked the nesting boxes. He sat on his favourite post, watching his flock get under my feet. There were three eggs, still warm. Suddenly, my appetite was back. Scrambled eggs, maybe with one of my greenhouse-ripened tomatoes. I just loved this time of year in my vegetable plot—there was food sprouting in every direction. Even if the therapy business I ran from my front room went a bit slow, I knew I’d eat dinner.
    Only three eggs from six layers. The two old Warrens, Ginger and Melissa, didn’t lay so often, but Jessie, Emili, Rihanna, and Florence were still young and—
    I stopped. Florence was not under my feet. She was not anywhere at all.
    â€œFlorence,” I called, even though she had no idea that was her name. “Flo, where are you? Chuck-chuck ?”
    Panic welled up. I didn’t understand this; none of the other hens were missing. They didn’t even seem perturbed, which they would have been if a fox had come near them. I’d already experienced a fox in the night. It had wreaked havoc, blood and feathers everywhere. I thought of other, more stealthy predators. A polecat, even a sparrowhawk, might have snatched her away if she’d escaped from the run.
    I worked around the perimeter of the garden, chuck-chucking .
    Florence was my secret favourite. She