been an eruption of heat in her chest and a sensation that shot straight down between her legs. It almost shamed her to admit it.
Burying these thoughts, she reached for her address book and turned up the numbers of DS Owen Williams, her contact across the border. She caught him during his mid- morning break. They'd spoken maybe three or four times since the Danny Wills case and on each occasion he'd been delighted to hear from her. He listened carefully as she explained that a witness 'had come to light', neglecting to mention McAvoy, and asked whether he could help trace all black Toyota MPVs that may have been in the vicinity of the Severn Bridge on a June night eight years ago.
'I'd be ab-so-lutely delighted,' Williams said in his exaggerated Welsh lilt. 'Anything to help my favourite coroner, especially - as I presume - you can't trust the Bristol police not to do an honest job for you.'
'Some of the officers involved in the original investigation are still in place.'
'You don't have to tell me any more, Mrs Cooper. You know I'd trust a Bangkok brothel keeper sooner than any one of those English bastards.'
Jenny had barely put the receiver down when the phone rang and Alison came on the line saying she had Mrs Jamal on hold.
'OK, put her through.'
Jenny braced herself. She was greeted by the sound of inconsolable sobs.
'Mrs Jamal? This is Mrs Cooper. What can I do for you?'
The sobbing continued, Mrs Jamal unable to speak except to mumble something that sounded like, 'I don't know ... I don't know.'
Jenny wanted to ask about McAvoy's memory of her mentioning a girlfriend, but the moment wasn't right. She seemed simply to need to have her grief heard and acknowledged.
Jenny offered what few words of comfort she could and heard herself say, 'I promise, I won't rest until I've lifted every stone to find out what happened to your son.'
With the sharpening of her symptoms over recent days, Jenny was beginning to dread the long hours between office and sleep with no alcohol or tranquillizing drug to soothe the mental sores. As the adrenalin subsided, the intangible fear ascended as surely as if the two were balanced on a pair of old-fashioned scales. Her desire not to let Ross see how she was feeling intensified the pain. She had staked her relationship with him on a promise that she could cope; that what she wanted more than anything else was to have him share her home until he went away to university. It hadn't been easy for him to move out of his father's house - David's disapproval had been largely silent, but all the more crushing for it - and his decision to trust her left her feeling that their cohabitation was a long, drawn-out test of her ability as a mother and of the truth of her recovery from emotional collapse.
She pulled up outside Melin Bach and sat in the darkness summoning strength. She knew she could hold it together, at a push, but she lacked the energy to be light or joyful. Her weakness infuriated her. She'd been better off with tranquillizers; at least they'd allowed the illusion of control. Part of her wished she could just go inside and go straight to bed, sleep through it and wake to her pills next morning, but there was dinner to cook, conversations to be had. Suddenly she felt as if she had an impossible mountain to climb. She reached for her beta blockers, snapped one in half with her teeth and swallowed.
Thank God for drugs. Thank God.
The tightness in her chest had already begun to loosen a little as she entered the house. She opened the living-room door to find Ross and Steve sitting side by side on the sofa eating sandwiches.
'Oh, hi.' Steve levered himself to his feet. 'Called by on my way down to the pub - got waylaid.'
Jenny turned to Ross, whose eyes were glued to the screen. 'I guess you won't be wanting any dinner.'
'No thanks. I'm going to Karen's.'
'On a Tuesday?'
'Why not?'
She couldn't think of a reason that wouldn't make her sound like the kind of mother she'd already sworn to him she wasn't. She compromised. 'All right, just make sure you're back by eleven. You don't want to be exhausted tomorrow.' She headed for the kitchen.
Steve said, 'Can I do anything?'
Jenny said, 'No. I'm fine.'
She was searching through the dregs in the fridge - it seemed to empty as soon as she'd filled it - when she heard Steve come in behind her. He set his empty plate on the counter and put an arm around her waist.
'Rough day?'
She wished he'd stop touching her. It was one more thing to deal with. 'No more than usual.'
Ross called out from the living room: 'See you.'
Steve was silent for a moment, his hand on the small of her back while she rummaged for a three-day-old lettuce, a tomato and a scrap of cheese. The front door opened and closed. They were alone.
'You're tense,' Steve said.
'Just tired.'
She slipped away from him and grabbed a plate from the cupboard, feeling self-conscious with him watching her fix her meagre supper.
'Ross mentioned you'd been fraught lately.'
'Oh, did he?'
'It's tough on your own.'
There was no answer to that. She tipped the last of a bottle of French dressing onto her plate and looked at the half-dead salad with no enthusiasm. She wasn't even hungry.
Steve stepped up close behind her, brought both hands around her middle and held her until she relaxed enough to lean into him. She felt the hard contours of his body through her clothes.
'You never ask me for anything,' he said quietly. 'You're not on your own, Jenny . . .' He kissed her neck. 'I'm here.'
She turned to face him and let him kiss her face and eyes and mouth, trying to submit to the moment, to let their closeness overwhelm her and push the intruding, chaotic thoughts from her mind. She let him take her hand and lead her upstairs; without speaking a word, she went with him to her bed and for a short while managed to lose herself.
Afterwards, she huddled close to him. The bedroom radiator never managed more than a tepid heat and there was hardness to the cold tonight, their breath almost visible in the frigid air. She slipped in and out of a restless doze, a carousel of faces passing in front of her eyes.
She vaguely heard Steve say, 'Are you awake?'
She forced her eyes open. 'Sorry . . .'
He pushed the hair gently back from her face. 'You were murmuring.'
'Anything interesting?'
'Couldn't make it out.'
In his concerned smile Jenny saw a different man from the one she'd met the previous June. He was gentler, more straightforward, less mysterious. This familiarity made her strangely sad: their bursts of excitement together were still intense, but briefer, his touch wasn't as electric, the heightened thrill had gone. And he wanted to know her when she didn't even know herself.
Steve said, 'I think you need a good night's sleep.' He kissed her forehead, slid out from under the duvet and pulled on his clothes.
'I'll call you,' he said and quietly let himself out.
Jenny listened guiltily to his footfalls on the stairs. He was a good man, she was fond of him, yet when they had been making love she had fantasized for a moment that she was with someone else. And it had unsettled her: it was as if the constant tug she felt towards the darker corners of her subconscious had found another weakness to work on. The one pure thing she had was being corrupted.
Frightened by the places her imagination wanted to take her, she summoned the will to haul herself out of bed and find her journal. She would write down the thoughts that were preying on her in the hope that bringing
