It was freezing cold in the hangar. They were standing with their gloved hands in their pockets, shoulders hunched against the bitter cold, waiting. Morning frost had formed on the floor and the stairs but Thomas and Moira didn’t wait in the office. Instead they stood on the raised platform Nanny Mary had been on the night before, waiting for the Piper to pull in, standing tall so that Ella would see them and know immediately that she wasn’t coming home to an atmosphere. It was Moira’s idea: a show of unity.

Thomas felt the vibration before he heard the ring. He struggled to get the phone out of his pocket with his gloved hands, smiled along with Moira at how clumsy he was being and finally yanked the gloves off and pulled the phone out. He expected to see “Don McD” on the screen, or “Hamish,” one of the boys who’d be in study hall this morning. It couldn’t be Squeak, he served mass in the mornings. It’d be Hamish, calling to ask him how he was, was he OK, had he fucked his nanny again since he’d been home. The caller ID said “Squeak.” Thomas felt his fingers weaken around the handset. He let it drop back into his pocket without answering.

“Who was it?”

“Someone I don’t want to talk to.” He looked away to the hangar door but could feel her eyes still on him.

His phone vibrated against his thigh and stopped.

“A journalist?” she suggested.

“No.” He couldn’t look at her.

She felt his discomfort and tried to make conversation: “They’ve been phoning me nonstop. I don’t know how they get my numbers.”

The phone sprang to life again in his pocket and Moira rolled her eyes. “Just don’t answer, Tom.”

“No, I won’t. Have I got time for the loo?”

“Hurry.”

Through the door the office was slightly warmer. A butane gas fire burned close to a man sitting by a desk with his feet resting on a bin. He was reading a newspaper, a red top, a cheap rag, the sort of paper that only did headlines in four-letter words.

Thomas wouldn’t even have noticed the front page if the man hadn’t blanched when he saw him, sat up straight, hurriedly tucked the paper under the desk and out of sight.

Thomas held his hand out. “Can I see?”

The man looked to the pocket with the insistent phone in it. Thomas shrugged and reached again for the paper.

The man gave it to him.

The photo was a large white square of gray sky. In the center was a small grainy figure, limp, dangling like a deflated party balloon: Lars hanging from the oak on the lawn. Thomas knew that view of the lawn, the low basement angle. It had been taken from Nanny Mary’s bedroom window.

He felt nothing at all looking at the picture of Lars, at the limpness of his neck, at his barrel body and thin legs. He told himself that he should feel something but all he could find in himself was a spark of compassion for the oak tree. It didn’t look like Lars. It didn’t look threatening at all.

Thomas let the paper slide back onto the desk. The man dropped his head and muttered “sorry.” Thomas shrugged.

Feeling colder than before, Thomas asked for the loo and the man pointed him to the back of the room.

Through a door to a small room with bare concrete walls that seemed to ooze cold. He locked the door and stood still, looking at the bare damp surfaces.

The phone in his pocket began to ring again. Thomas reached for the phone. He used a fingernail to pick the back off, took out the sim card to shut the fucking thing up. He looked at the little gold panel and held it away from him, revolted, as if Squeak was in it. He dropped it into the toilet bowl and flushed. The little gold square circled twice and then was sucked down the pipe.

He was staring into the toilet water when the headline next to Lars’s photo registered in his consciousness. Three words only, all equal size. HEIRESS’S BRUTAL MURDER.

Thomas stopped still. He shut his eyes tight and tilted his head to the side, as if he could dislodge the words, make them drop out of his ear and stop being on the front page. That’s why Squeak had phoned. It wasn’t to threaten him, he was phoning to say did you see it. He’d gone to serve mass and seen the paper. Father Sholtham served Thursday morning mass and he read the Daily Mail. He must have left it in the vestry. But Thomas was glad the sim card was gone, that Squeak couldn’t phone him. He didn’t care if he never spoke to him again.

He pulled the door open and stepped into the office, looking at the headline again. HEIRESS’S BRUTAL MURDER.

Without asking he took the paper from the man’s hands. He turned it around and looked at the words. Full story inside pages 3–7. Thomas opened at page 3. A picture of her, younger, blonder, wearing a red bikini, with a clashing blue sea behind her. She must have been on a balcony, standing with her hips twisted away from her body to make herself look slimmer.

Sarah Erroll had been at an exclusive girls’ school Thomas had never heard of. An old school friend said something meaningless about her—she was helpful. The article pointed out that she was an only child, had no kids, no husband and had devoted herself to caring for her elderly mother. Brutal, said a senior policeman who looked like a movie star and was featured on several pages. Whoever did this will strike again unless they are found, said DCI Handsome. I have never seen a more appalling crime.

“You take it, mate,” said the man, “if you want…”

“Thank you.” Thomas took it, not because he wanted to read it, only because he didn’t want the man to read about her, to have that in his head. But when he got to the door he remembered Lars was on it and Moira was outside. He turned and stopped at the door, looked at the paper, turned back to the man for guidance. “Don’t want my mum…”

“Fold it up.”

He did that, but it wouldn’t bend enough so he took out the sports supplement in the middle and gave it back to the man and then folded it small and tucked it into his inside pocket before he stepped out into the cold hangar and shut the door carefully behind him.

Moira looked up at him, bright eyed, kind and warm. When she saw his face the smile slid from her face.

“Who was that on the phone?”

“No, it’s fine.” He craned forward to look for the plane.

“Tommy, who was it?”

“No one. Nothing.”

“You look ill, suddenly.”

He reached into his pocket and took out the paper, held it out to her. She unfolded it and sighed. “Oh no. Oh, Nanny Mary, for heaven’s sake, what a snake. Those confidentiality clauses aren’t worth a thing…”

“She didn’t ask for a pay-out, did she?”

“No.” Moira examined the picture. “Wonder what else she’s got up her sleeve…”

It sounded like an insect, an approaching buzz. The plane came into view around the corner, taxiing towards them slowly until they could see Captain Jack’s face in the window and the little bump of Ella’s head in the back seat.

“Hide it, Mum.”

Moira folded the paper away quickly, handed it to him and Thomas hurriedly tucked it back into his pocket.

They watched the plane slow in front of them and Thomas knew it wouldn’t be all right. He thought of Lars in Amsterdam shutting a bedroom door, leaving Thomas with a depressed girl from Kiev. They passed the half hour whispering about how neither of them wanted to be here. Thomas didn’t want to be here either. It felt the same.

He held on to the railing to steady himself, his fingers clenching the burning cold metal, glad of the searing pain. Sarah Erroll had no kids. She was not Lars’s other wife, not his pride and comfort. She was like Thomas, just a footnote in his life.

“Smile now.” But Moira was angry with Nanny Mary and her smile had dried on her face.

The Piper taxied into the hangar, crawling slowly through the open doors and Ella’s little round face appeared at the window, hopeful, looking to see the first signs of how things were at home. Thomas watched her eyes flick from Moira to him, from Moira’s brown lipstick slit of a mouth to his sad and guilty eyes. She slumped back into the dark cabin.

The plane stopped. Captain Jack waited until the engines had died before he opened the door, climbing down and helping Ella out.

She was wearing her gray school overcoat and matching cloche hat, little black shoes with beige rubber soles. As she waited for her bag Thomas saw her struggle not to cry, clenching her eyes shut and opening them, fighting the frown at her mouth.

Moira stayed where she was on the platform and carried on smiling, baffled that them being here was no reassurance at all.

Thomas walked down the steps and over to the sister he had hated since the moment she was born. He walked over to her and lifted her off her little feet in a tight hug and said kind things into her heaving shoulder as she hung limp on him.

“Don’t cry, Ella.” His voice was as flat as a petrol spill. “Don’t cry. I’ll make it right. I swear I will.”