‘He was your idea.’

‘He likes you more.’

‘He hates me the least ,’ Gareth corrected.

He was admittedly kind of right there.

Mep, for as long as we’d had him, existed in a permanent state of both senility and hostility.

We had rescued him from a shelter as a kind of wedding gift to ourselves.

We couldn’t afford a honeymoon after spending our limited savings on the wedding, and we’d foolishly assumed we’d only have Mep for a few years before he would tragically pop his clogs, but five and a bit years into our marriage, Mep just kept on trucking.

Sometimes, I wondered if it was his sheer hatred for us that gave him life.

He seemed to relish being such a constant source of annoyance that maybe he couldn’t bear the thought of us living easier lives without him.

He relied on us for food, shelter and the occasional pet, and that was about it.

‘And no more interaction with the creepy neighbour?’Gareth asked.

The lie rolled off my tongue more smoothly than I expected, likely thanks to the rehearsals I’d had with myself during the drive here.

‘Saw him struggling with his shopping yesterday actually, but that was about it. Just packed some stuff away and then watched a bit of crap TV, made dinner, and here I am.’

‘You helped him with his shopping? That’s awfully Christian of you.’

‘The man’s about seventy-nine, Gareth. I mean, I debated helping him for sure, before my conscience won out. Stupid conscience.’

‘Ah, I see, I see,’ Gareth said, nodding his head like one of those bobbing dogs you put in the back of your car.

‘However, Mr Donoghue, the real question is: when do you reckon you’ll finish tonight?’ I said, changing the subject as subtly and quietly as I could.

‘Got about two more hours. Isla is on me for an action plan for this GBH case next week, and of course, the DI from hell still wants Carl’s investigation logs done at some point, but then I’ll be finished.’

‘Okay, but then you come home and wake me up, all right?’ I instructed, motioning to my lower area. ‘It’s peak time.’

It took him a minute to register, bless him. I could almost hear the gears clunking and thudding in his brain as he tried to work it out.

‘Ooooh,’ he said as the penny dropped.

‘Yeah,’ I said, really extending and enunciating the vowels as I nodded so he would get the message.

‘Got you, already on it. I’ll have a black coffee before I come home,’ he said, hyping himself up.

‘No, no, you dummy, don’t have a black coffee before you come home, or you’ll be up all night, and you’ll barely sleep.’

‘I will have a green tea.’ He squinted his eyes and wiggled his body on his ergonomic office chair. ‘With extra matcha,’ he assibilated.

God, he was such an idiot. I loved him so much.

‘That’s better, okay? But just make sure that you wake me up, all right? Don’t you dare just come in and go to sleep.’

‘I won’t, I promise!’ he said emphatically. ‘You know me, I never break promises!’

I couldn’t believe I had to pester my husband for sex. How utterly depressing.

‘You seem happier today, my love. It’s… nice to see,’ Gareth said sincerely, beaming through his warm smile.

‘Just realised how lucky I am,’ I said, pressing my hand lightly against his cheek.

I left the station, said goodbye to Judith, got into the car, and headed back to the house.

I still had the satnav on; even though I had done this journey more than twenty times now, I still wasn’t a hundred per cent on the way to get home.

It still felt like we were on a holiday, spending time at this lovely guest house we were renting before we went back to our actual apartment, our actual home.

As I pulled up, I saw a familiar silhouette toddling towards me, waving her arms about madly to get my attention. I groaned as I braced every muscle in my face, trying to muster my absolute best fake smile.

‘Oh, Fran, hello, hello, hello!’ came her shrill banshee screams from across the street.

‘Hi, Beryl,’ I said, trying not to let any reluctance show as I got out of the car, and trotted over to meet her on the other side of the road.

Of course, it was nice to have friendly neighbours, but part of me wished that they were more like colleagues who work on a different floor.

You’d smile, you’d say hello, but you’d never have to commit to the most grievous of all sins: chit-chat.

Beryl was late sixties, and bless her, a lovely old woman who was losing her hearing and had told me her life story approximately forty seconds after I had exited the moving truck.

Her husband had tripped, fallen down the stairs and died four years ago, and since then she had thrown herself – poor choice of words, I know – into her knitting.

Knitting for homeless dogs, knitting for the neighbours, even knitting hats for children in Kenya to wear to school.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t think children in Kenya would really need thick woolly hats.

‘How’s it going? I guess you’re fully unpacked now?’ she asked.

‘Not yet, I’m afraid, we still have a lot to go,’ I replied.

‘Well, if you ever need a hand, you know exactly where I am – and how’s that hard-working husband of yours? I bet he’s solving lots of murders.’

God, people loved to ask that question whenever I mentioned my husband was a detective. Now, being on the receiving end of it, I could finally grasp how incredibly annoying it was.

‘I just got back from seeing him, actually. He’s good, he’s well, though I think he’s working too hard.’

‘Oh, of course he is, of course he is. I remember Trevor…’

This was a good time for me to nod, smile, and wonder what kind of bath bomb I would use tonight. Fairygloss Dreamland or Angel’s Heaven?

‘… he would work himself to the bone, he would. I hope you don’t think I’m being nosy, but I noticed you went into Mr O’Neill’s house yesterday afternoon. How is he doing?’

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

‘Oh, so I noticed he was struggling a bit with his shopping as he came in from the driveway, so I just thought I’d see if I could give him a hand,’ I said, trying not to let any nervousness or hesitation in my voice show.

‘Oh, that makes sense. He is a rather… unusual man. I’ve only spoken to him a few times since we’ve moved here in ’78, but I’m so glad he’s taken to you so quickly.’

‘Ah, it’s the social worker in me, I think,’ I said, forcing a polite laugh.

I silently cursed as my eyes clocked Beryl’s front door, which had one of those video doorbells that directly faced not only ours, but O’Neill’s house, too.

I felt a flutter in my chest that I struggled to stifle.

‘I can talk to anyone about anything…’ I said, but I noticed that my voice was trailing off.

Spotting that camera had complicated things.

‘Right.’ I clapped my hands together and slowly angled my body towards my house. ‘I better be going, lots more unpacking to…’

As I started to gently sidestep towards the house to make my exit, I noticed Beryl wince and groan slightly.

She wanted me to do something. Subtlety was not Beryl’s strong suit.

‘You okay, Beryl?’ I asked, hoping compassion would be the visible emotion and not my internal frustration.

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. Just a pain in my back, I’m afraid. Tony pulled me off so hard today I think he may have done my back in.’

For context: Tony is her Shih Tzu; get your mind out of the gutter.

And just like that, a perfectly formed plan fell right into place, another way I could cover up my tracks.

‘I can walk him for a few days if you’d like, Beryl. I have work tomorrow, but I don’t mind giving him a walk around the block a bit before and after if it helps you out?’

‘Oh, would you? That would be marvellous. I’m sorry to be such a pain, but I just think I need to rest up and let my back heal.’

‘You do that, Beryl, okay? I’ll come by first thing tomorrow morning and pick him up, all right?’

‘That would be just so fantastic. Oh, thank you so much, Fran.’

‘Not a problem at all. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?’

I quickly rushed back to the house before Beryl remembered anything else to chat to me about.

When I opened the door, I was instantly greeted by Mep’s demonic shrieks. I did like to wonder what he was trying to say sometimes: Where the hell have you been, cretin? What time do you call this?

I washed up the risotto dish, dried it with the tea towel Gareth’s nana had given us, and popped it away in the cupboard.

I sighed as I looked around the house, still cluttered with an array of cardboard boxes.

Then I began to unload a few of the ‘memory crates’ that Gareth and I had been adding to over the past seven years.

I was painfully sentimental, and every date with Gareth, I had decided to keep a little something to remember it by.

A ticket stub from the arcade, the ripped and worn jacket that I’d been wearing when we had our first kiss, even the pack of cigarettes that I’d confiscated from him three months into dating.

I did what I seemed to do with all of our stuff in the moving process: deposited it from one temporary box into a more permanent one and then promptly deposited it somewhere else out of sight.

I drew myself a bath and realised that with everything that had gone on today, I hadn’t checked in with Angus. I typed up a quick text.

Everything all right today?

All good

I would tell him about everything with O’Neill later.

Angus was the kind of person who preferred to be left alone, but I still liked to check up on him every day.

I wondered what he would say to me after I told him about O’Neill – he’d probably be absolutely furious with me, but I figured I’d cross that bridge later.

Mep came to sit with me as I went through a few more reports from my clients in bed before flicking the lights off to sleep.

Gareth came home an hour or so later than he’d said he would, but true to his word, we still had sex, a very simple, bread and butter kind of sex.

He finished within two minutes, job done.

I considered tucking my legs up, a technique Gareth said his mum had sworn by when conceiving him and his brothers.

The nature of the advice seemed problematic, even vaguely Oedipal, but I decided to give the pregnancy Pilates a miss for now.

‘When we have the baby, I’m going to dial it back, I promise,’ Gareth murmured, placing an arm around me, and drifting off to sleep.

I was far too drowsy to respond, but I knew Gareth was only half-committing to what he was saying. He would always have three loves in his life: me (obviously), our future children (hopefully), and the police (unequivocally).

As I tried to sleep, I calculated roughly how far away we were from the remains of the corpse, from our bedroom to his wheelie bin. Roughly, I calculated about eleven metres.