Am I really going to do this? Is this a strategy, or a burst of recklessness I’ll regret?

“I lied to you. I am Beth Leeson—that’s true—but the bag I gave you belongs to my son. It’s nothing to do with the Caters. I lied because . . . well, it’s a long story, but . . . I think there might be something wrong—I mean really, horribly wrong—in the Cater household. It would take too long to tell you everything so I’ll just say this: three days ago, Jeanette Cater, or, rather, a woman who introduced herself to me as Jeanette Cater, with a foreign accent, told me that her children were called Toby and Emma. Not Thomas and Emily. And . . . a few days before that, I saw a woman who is not Jeanette Cater, because she’s my old friend Flora Braid, getting out of a silver Range Rover and . . .” I should probably stop there. The rest would sound too implausible.

Lou shakes her head. “I can’t talk to you,” she says in a tight voice. “You need to leave.”

“You have my phone number. Will you ring me later? I swear to you, whatever you tell me will go no further. No one will ever know you said anything at all.”

She shakes her head more vigorously. The pearl flowers on her earlobes jiggle up and down.

“I’m worried about the children. Thomas and Emily. I think you are too.”

That one hit home. Her eyes widen. She takes a step back and nearly trips over the sports bag, which she’s left on the floor. She picks it up and pushes it across the desk to me. “Please just go,” she says.

10

The plan was to drive straight home after Kimbolton Prep School; the decision to ignore the plan was unanimous, which is why, for the third time in less than a week, I’m on Wyddial Lane. I turn the corner and pull over as soon as I’m clear, at the top end of the road. Hopefully Marilyn Oxley won’t see me, or the Caters.

Or Flora.

Zannah says, “If I pass my test when I’m seventeen, will you and Dad buy me a car? I want a Mini.”

“Too expensive,” I say. “But I’ll buy you driving lessons—which otherwise you won’t be able to afford—”

“Cool.”

“—if, and only if, you start revising properly for your GCSEs. Tomorrow, first thing.”

“Blackmailer.”

I feel as if the ever-vigilant eyes of Marilyn Oxley are on me already. If they’re not now, they soon might be, even if I stay up at this end of the street. She’s probably got a long-range camera fitted to her roof and a bank of screens in her front room—like security guards in films, who always fall asleep at the exact moment that a balaclava-clad psychopath tiptoes through all the rooms they’re supposed to be watching. Those movies need Marilyn Oxley; she wouldn’t miss a thing.

I don’t care if she sees me. I’m here to talk to other people, not her, and certainly not Kevin Cater and Fake Jeanette. I’m allowed to do that—or allowed to try, anyway. Today, my target is all the other houses. I need to find residents of Wyddial Lane that I haven’t already spoken to.

“Can I come with you?” Zannah asks. “Or will that make us look like Jehovah’s Witnesses? They always go in pairs.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of anyone thinking you’re doing the Lord’s work,” I say, eying her gray T-shirt, which has “Gang Sh*t” printed on it in black. How did I not notice that before? “If you’re coming with, you’ll need to zip up your jacket,” I tell her. “Did you have it zipped while we were talking to Lou Munday?”

“Irrelevant, since that’s in the past.” Zan snorts dismissively. “What, you think she’d have spilled everything she knows if I’d worn a Bambi T-shirt instead? Anyway, there’s an asterisk, so it’s not even a swear word. Which house shall we start with?”

“Let’s just go door to door.”

“Let’s definitely not do that. We should pick the ones that look most chilled.”

“Chilled? Oh, you mean—”

“Not refrigerated. Most of them look uptight and closed off—walls, fences, high gates. Kind of like luxurious prisons. There’s no way people who live in houses like that are going to invite two strangers in and start chatting to them, answering a load of weird questions.”

“So shall we start with the only one up at this end that doesn’t look like that?” I point at it through the car window. On one of its gateless gateposts, there’s a sign saying “No. 3.” There’s a wall, but it’s low and crumbling. There’s nothing to suggest that its owners want to hide themselves from prying eyes.

“Number 3 looks a good shout,” Zan agrees. “Especially as it’s got a wheelie bin at an angle outside its front door.”

“Why? How’s that relevant?”

“Think about it, Mother.”

We sit in silence for a few seconds. Then I say, “Thought. Still don’t know.”

“It can’t be bin day, or everyone’s bins would be out on the pavement. Or a good few still would, at least—the ones belonging to people who aren’t yet back from work. All these houses have massive gardens, loads of space on either side. But number 3’s owners couldn’t be bothered to wheel the bin a few feet farther and put it there, in that wooden bus-shelter type thing attached to the side of the house that’s probably a bin store. They’d rather make the least possible effort, and leave it at the top of the driveway, where it makes the house look worse to anyone who passes by. I mean, who cares, right? I wouldn’t either. There are bins in the world—deal with it.”

“But that’s your point,” I say, getting it at last.

“Uh-huh. Number 3’s owners can’t be bothered with trivial shit. All their neighbors hate them for lowering the tone with their noticeable bin, and they don’t care. Maybe they also won’t care that it’s not the done thing to tell strangers about what secret, twisted things your neighbors get up to.”

“Okay. Number 3 it is.”

I lock the car and we walk up the driveway. It’s a wide house, as enormous as all the others on Wyddial Lane, painted the color of buttermilk, with a redbrick chimney attached to its front. Next to the front door there’s a sign that says “Low Brooms.”

I ring the bell and we wait. “We might have to wait a while,” I mutter. “Getting to the front door in a house this size . . .”

It opens surprisingly quickly. A woman who looks around my age, wearing cut-off bleached-denim shorts and a pink long-sleeved top, smiles at me and Zan and says, “Please say something nice!”

Not the response I was expecting.

Her frizzy brown hair has streaks of gray in it. Around her neck, on a leather cord, she’s wearing a huge silver pendant that looks like a jellyfish, with a shiny dark green stone at its center. “I like your pendant,” I tell her, hoping that’s nice enough.

She beams at me. “That’s the best thing you could have said. You can come again!” She laughs. “I couldn’t adore it more, and I’ve worn it every day since I bought it and, do you know what? No one has said anything about it apart from you. No one’s spontaneously said, ‘What a beautiful piece of jewelry!’ Look, it’s two-sided. Nautilus with a malachite eye on one side, ammonite fossil on the other. Oh—that wasn’t what I meant when I said, ‘Say something nice!’ I wasn’t fishing for compliments!”

“Jellyfishing for compliments,” I say, trying to present myself as the sort of person this woman would get on well with.

“Huh? Oh! No, a nautilus is very different from a jellyfish. Though in the grand scheme of things, they’re both in the sea, so . . . hey!” She shrugs. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m high on drugs. I’m really not. I’m just kind of excited. I don’t normally . . . wow, I mean, shut up, Tilly, stop blathering on at these poor people!”

“Hi, Tilly. I’m Beth Leeson. This is my daughter, Zannah.” I hold out my hand. She shakes it. “Please don’t stop blathering on our account. We came here to blather, as a matter of fact, so . . . if you blather first, I’ll feel less guilty about my own blathering!”

I can feel disapproval radiating from Zannah. As soon as we’re alone, she’s going to list all the ways I handled this wrong.

Tilly from number 3 appreciates my act, anyway. She’s laughing like a loon. “Okay, well, do you wanna come in?” she says. “Assuming you’re not serial killers, or canvassers from an evil political party? They’re all evil these days, let’s face it. I’d vote Lib Dem but there are only about three of them left and one’s a golden retriever.” She throws back her head and cackles again.