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Rice was interested in the fact that Steven Lamb had almost been murdered. Who wouldn’t be interested in that? She wished now that she’d known that at the time. But right now she’d rather drop down dead with curiosity than give Reynolds the satisfaction of pleading for information he should be sharing as a matter of course.

So she took a piece of toast from the rack and mopped up her bean juice with it.

‘Maybe I’ll call Kate Gulliver,’ he said sharply. ‘Discuss it with her.’

Oh shut up, thought Rice.

32

JUNE THE SECOND – exactly four weeks after Jess Took had been stolen from her father’s horsebox – Nan’s birthday dawned early and bright, the chill night warming quickly as the sun cleared the top of the moor.

Steven and Davey still hadn’t made up. Steven had tried a few times but Davey was a grudge-bearer, and after a week of grunts and monosyllables, Lettie had told them they weren’t welcome on the birthday trip to Barnstaple.

‘They should go through a war together,’ Nan had decreed. ‘That’d sort them out.’ Her default position was that there was no problem so big that it could not be resolved by going through a war together. It was her solution for everything from family spats to inflation. Steven had once pointed out that the Israelis and Palestinians had been going through a war together for years and it didn’t seem to be sorting much out, and Nan had told him not to be cheeky.

Steven was slightly disappointed with the weather, because he had bought his nan an umbrella. It sounded boring as hell, but it was so small and light that it could be carried in her pocket, let alone her handbag. And the best thing about it – the absolute best – was that when raised, the canopy was covered with old family photos.

Once he’d accepted the truth about the porn channel, Steven had put his Friday evenings at Chantelle Cox’s to good use. He didn’t have a computer of his own, so he’d used hers – scanning old pictures and emailing them to the company he’d found online that would print photos on to almost any object he cared to pay over the odds for.

Steven had used the box of photos from the cupboard under the stairs and had picked a dozen of the best. They were all old; he couldn’t remember the last time family photos had been taken, or who had taken most of these. He and Davey under Weston pier with ice creams; a young Lettie with her hair up, looking sparkly; Nan squinting, with Davey in a buggy.

A dozen times since it had arrived, Steven had opened the umbrella in his room to admire it. He was sure Nan would love it, combining as it did the two things she was most interested in – the past and the weather.

Steven folded the umbrella carefully down to its smallest size, clipped it tightly in place and pulled on the little cover it was supplied with. Then he wrapped it in a sheet of flowered paper he’d bought specially from Mr Jacoby’s shop. The paper came with two little tags in matching colours. He wrote ‘To Nan, with love from Steven’ on one, and taped it to the parcel.

Despite the lack of rain, his good mood had returned. Friday at school had seen to that. Em hadn’t changed her mind; she still loved him. The relief had been tremendous. His fledgling self-confidence – shaken by the encounter with Jonas Holly – had been quickly rebuilt by Em’s smile as he’d walked into the classroom. He could tell she’d been watching the door for him.

‘Have you had sex?’ Lewis had said suspiciously.

‘No.’ Steven had smiled, because that no longer mattered.

‘Didn’t think so,’ Lewis had snorted, when he so obviously had thought so that it made Steven laugh.

‘Breakfast!’ Lettie yelled up the stairs. It was early today, because of her and Nan getting the bus to Barnstaple. Even so, Steven heard Davey thundering down the stairs as if he hadn’t eaten for a week.

Davey had had no money to buy Nan a gift with. He’d revealed this with a meaningful glare in Steven’s direction, which was wasted on Lettie.

‘Then make her something,’ she’d shrugged.

Davey had screwed up his face. ‘Make something?! I’m not a Chinese, you know!’

‘I can see that, thank you, Mr Smartypants.’

‘Make what? All the stuff I make falls apart.’

That was true; he was a craftwork dunce.

‘Then try harder,’ Lettie said unsympathetically. ‘It’s not like you don’t know your nan’s birthday. It’s the same date every year, you know.’

So Davey had made Nan a bird out of a cereal packet and assorted feathers he’d found up in the woods. It looked like cardboard roadkill and – true to Davey’s skill level – was already starting to moult.

Now Steven stopped with his hand on his bedroom door handle. He felt bad for Davey. Even though the little shit had ruined his skateboard, he felt bad that his brother only had a sticky clump of kindergarten crap to give to Nan for her birthday. Felt bad for Davey and Nan.

‘Steven! Breakfast! I’m not saying again!’

Quickly, he picked up a pen and added ‘and Davey’ to the tag, then ran downstairs.