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vicious, either when they were absent or when they came surging in almost uninvited, crowding an already overfull life and landing you with two houses neither of which you both liked, both demanding attention with the insistence of an incontinent geriatric.
    ‘In fact,’ she said, dabbing her lips and smiling, ‘I’m not sure I want to bother with a dessert. What about you?’ At least bed – or the living room floor – was one place they could always resolve their problems.
     
    ‘Does watching the late news count as work?’ she asked later over a Glenfiddich. ‘Come on, yes or no?’
    ‘Well,’ he considered, pulling her feet on to his lap, and massaging away the day’s cares, ‘it all depends. Yes and no, I’d say. Depending on whether you want to watch it or ought to watch it.’
    ‘If I don’t it’s work?’
    ‘You might want to pick up the football results in which case it’s not work.’
    The work story was actually the main one after the break. ‘Parents all over Kent are threatening to keep their daughters at home after the latest attack on a teenage girl in Whitstable. This attack, worse than the others which have shocked parents and terrified young girls throughout the county and led to threats to boycott schools, is number twenty-three overall, and the seventh this month.’ The reporter was Dilly Pound, the woman who had been so pressing at Wednesday’s press conference. She reminded Fran of a schoolteacher, in her calm delivery – somewhat at odds with the emotive language of the report. A familiar computer graphic obligingly showed each cluster of offences.
    ‘Is that true?’ Mark asked, dropping her foot abruptly. ‘Is there really a school boycott?’
    ‘I’d certainly want to know if there was – and not via TV!’
    Suddenly Jill Tanner’s face was on the screen, her hair blown into a frenzied halo.
    ‘That can’t be Tanner!’ Mark dropped Fran’sfeet. ‘She looks more like a bag lady than the senior officer in charge of a sensitive case,’ he added, strongly disapproving.
    ‘Blame the lighting,’ Fran agreed. ‘We’ve got a perfectly good room for interviews like this, so why have they dragged her outside? Why go for that ghoulish shadowing? And why let the wind blow away all her carefully prepared words? Who could ever trust a spokesperson like that? What with that and their allegations, I think I may get on the phone to TVInvicta tomorrow and have a word. I don’t like it when the media try to undercut an investigation. Not when we do all in our power to feed them stories and cooperate with them.’
    ‘I suppose we can’t blame the TV people if she doesn’t comb her hair.’
    ‘Just watch me.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘You protected me when I needed it; I must do the best I can for her. Mustn’t I?’

CHAPTER THREE
    It won’t be long now, I promise. And then I shall never leave you. Wherever you go, I shall go too.
     
    It was possible for someone of Fran’s rank to summon the TVInvicta News editor to her office, but since she had a morning dental appointment in Canterbury she decided to pay him the apparent courtesy of visiting him in his office in the new Whitefriars complex.
    If Jill Tanner had found Henson’s office overly masculine and unwelcoming, goodness knew what she’d have made of this. The view might have been to die for – at night the floodlit tower of the Cathedral would dominate it – but there seemed a distinct whiff of MFI about the executive furniture, and the room itself was rather smaller than her own. But there was nothing to relieve the white walls or the laminate floor, and she suspected the blinds had never been used in anger. Someone was making a statement, even if he didn’t quite know what it was.
    ‘Clearly you’re here over something more than an unpaid speeding fine,’ Huw Venn stood to greet her, possibly wondering whether to emerge from behind his desk to shake her hand but deciding better of it.
    ‘Do you have any