on them, but he was interested. Beyond the necklace of house lights, there was nothing, a black expanse of open countryside. This was only six miles inland from Barnstaple, but it could have been the edge of the world.
If a woman had arrived here, as the landlady had imagined, surely someone would have noticed. She hadn’t come with Walden on the bus. The mysterious lover was all speculation, of course, but if Walden hadn’t been here to meet a woman, what had brought him to Lovacott? Why had he wanted to stay completely sober and in control?
Matthew took out his phone to call Ross for a lift. Without the stops and detours, it would only take fifteen minutes to drive into Barnstaple. Suddenly the bus’s headlights went on and it revved into life. Of course, it must go back to the depot, it wouldn’t stay here all night. Matthew waved at the driver and climbed aboard.
Chapter Twelve
JEN HAD A CHANCE TO GET home to check on the kids before the evening briefing. They lived in the district of Newport, on the edge of Barnstaple and close to the school where Matthew Venn had been a pupil. Her place was squashed into a terrace of mismatched cottages, three storeys so it was bigger than most of the houses in the street, but very narrow and too small for a woman with a hoarding problem and two growing teenagers. She parked in the alley at the back and walked down the strip of garden. It thrived despite months of neglect. The daffodils were just coming out and soon there would be tulips. The first nice weekend she had off she’d tidy it, get rid of the dead leaves. She didn’t care if her house was a mess, but she loved being out in the garden.
The door led straight into a tiny kitchen. Ella must have loaded the dishwasher and she felt a glow of gratitude because she wasn’t walking in to the usual chaos. The living room was dark and cold. The room looked out onto the street and the window was so small that it scarcely got any sunlight. She’d tried to brighten it with throws and pictures, and it was cosy enough in winter with the fire lit, but now it just seemed dusty and cluttered. The stairs led up from a corner of the kitchen. She shouted up.
‘Kids. I’m home!’ Her voice was very loud because their rooms were in the attic. It seemed to echo. There were footsteps on the stairs. Ella appeared, still in her school uniform sweat-shirt, a ballpoint pen tucked behind one ear.
‘What’s for tea?’
Jen couldn’t answer that. ‘Where’s Ben?’
‘At Max’s. His mum said he can eat there.’ Ella walked on down and sat on the bottom step. ‘I can’t find any food in this house.’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I meant to do a shop yesterday on my way home from work and then there was that murder. Do you fancy a takeaway?’ Jen looked at her watch. ‘If I go now, I should have time to eat it with you before I need to go out again.’
‘You’re out again?’
‘Yeah. Final briefing of the day. Shouldn’t be late back, though.’ Jen thought that these days her life was all about compromise and never doing anything well. She was guilty that she couldn’t put all her energy into work because she was distracted by what might be going on at home, and guilty that her kids might be turning into tearaways because she gave them so little attention. Ben was feral, seldom at home, and Ella seemed perpetually stressed and anxious. Sometimes she worried that Ella, after being a monstrous pre-teen, was becoming too conscientious, too straight and boring. She’d been hanging around with the same lad for months and their idea of a good night was watching the telly in the front room. The last thing Jen wanted was for her daughter to marry early without experiencing any kind of life. She’d made that mistake, fallen for the dream of the perfect man and the perfect life, and look what had happened.
‘No worries. I can work better in an empty house anyway.’ Ella stood up. ‘Look. I’ll go and get the food.You grab a shower, sort yourself out. Want your usual?’
‘Yeah, fab, thanks.’ Jen’s head was so filled with ideas about Walden and the women in Hope Street that she couldn’t even begin to think about what she might want to eat.
* * *
The room