And her position there mattered to her. When she’d resigned from the police force (at a time when promotion had been imminent), she’d expected her new job would become an important part of her world. But it had very rapidly become much more than that. The work she did in the shelter had become the very keystone of her existence, and without it, she was a woman drowning in the meaninglessness of life.

  It was that quiet part of the afternoon, between lunch being cleared away and preparations for tea yet to begin, a time when residents had a light nap or took some air in the garden. For Meadows, it was a chance (grudgingly grasped at) to catch up on paperwork – and that was exactly what she was doing when the door of her office was unceremoniously (and uncharacteristically) flung open, and she looked up to see Lizzie Grimshaw standing there.

  According to the records, Lizzie was twenty-one, though she could easily have been taken for much younger. She was also heavily pregnant and expected to give birth soon – which possibly explained the agitated expression on her face.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Maybe,’ the young woman gasped.

  A flicker of a smile crossed Meadows’ face. She had told Lizzie a dozen times that her name was Kate, or – if she insisted on being formal – Ms Meadows, but Lizzie was adamant that if she was called ‘Mrs Maybe’ on the board outside, it was official, and nothing Kate herself could say would alter that.

  Lizzie did not have a lot going for her. She had been ill-educated and ill-used all her life, yet there was a spark in her – a determination to make the best of things – that Meadows couldn’t help but admire.

  ‘You’ve got to do something. Mrs Maybe,’ the girl moaned.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Jane’s husband! He’s at the front door, trying to knock it down. He told me I had to let him in, and when I said I wasn’t allowed, he said I was a stupid little shit, and he’d have me moved to the nuthouse. Can he do that, Mrs Maybe?’ Lizzie crossed her arms, put one hand on each shoulder, and hugged herself tightly. ‘Can he have me moved to the nuthouse?’

  ‘No, he can’t,’ Meadows replied.

  But she was not sure she was being entirely honest with Lizzie. Of course, Andrew Lofthouse couldn’t do it directly, but he was an important man in Whitebridge, and his unseen tentacles could move hundreds of hidden levers.

  Meadows switched on the CCTV screen. Lizzie had been quite right. There was Lofthouse, strolling there up and down by the front door – big and square and angry.

  This would have to be dealt with – and quickly.

  Meadows left the office through the door that accessed her own flat.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Lizzie called after her, in a panic.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ Meadows promised.

  If she was going to handle a large, furious man like Lofthouse entirely on her own, she needed to be wearing the right clothes, and she knew, without even stopping to look, that she had nothing suitable. On the other hand, Zelda, her alto ego, would provide her with just what she needed.

  She was wearing flat heels that afternoon, but now she shucked them off and selected a pair of high-heeled shoes from what she always thought of as Zelda’s midnight collection.

  She returned to the office, where Lizzie was still pacing the carpet.

  ‘Where’s Jane now?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘In the cupboard,’ Lizzie said, in a half-moan.

  Jesus, that was bad. For a child who felt threatened, a small, enclosed space, shut off from the world, seemed the ideal refuge, but a woman in her late thirties, who’d had a successful business career, really shouldn’t feel the need to hide away from her husband in a cupboard.

  ‘There are a lot of cupboards in this house,’ she said. ‘Which one are we talking about?’

  ‘The one under the stairs.’

  Now that really was bad. The staircase was in the main hall, which was entered by the front door, on the other side of which stood a furious Andrew Lofthouse. So while there was no logic in choosing any of the cupboards to hide in, it was particularly illogical to choose this one. But then it had been primal fear, not rational thought, which had driven her into the deepest, darkest cupboard the house had to offer.

  Meadows strode rapidly down the corridor to the central hallway. Her Zelda heels clicked angrily against the marble floor, and the sound bounced back like ricocheting bullets when it hit the ceiling.

  And now she could hear two additional noises. The first was a low moaning from somewhere overhead, the second a steady tattoo of impatience being loudly drummed on the door.

  She flicked the switch on the entry phone. ‘I can’t deal with you until I’ve calmed things down in here, Mr Lofthouse,’ she said, ‘and the longer you keep hammering on the door, the longer that’s going to take me. So it’s really up to you, isn’t it?’

  The banging stopped, but the face on the monitor seemed to swell with rage.

  Meadows turned to deal with the moaning, which was emanating from the two women – Lucy and Joyce – and Joyce’s three children – Roger, Joan and little Jake – who were all huddled together halfway up the stairs.

  A few hours earlier, they had looked like people who were slowly and carefully putting their lives back together again, Meadows thought – now they seemed closer to victims of the Nazis, who had just been herded off the death train on to the platform in a concentration camp, and were awaiting their inevitable fate.

  Andrew Lofthouse had a lot to answer for.

  ‘You’ve nothing to worry about, ladies,’ Meadows called up the stairs. ‘I can handle it – but first, I need you to take the kids back upstairs.’

  The cupboard under the stairs, like most similarly located cupboards – was wedge-shaped. At one end, it was tall enough to store an upright vacuum cleaner. Then, the ceiling immediately began to plunge, so that five feet from its apex, it met the floor.

  Jane Lofthouse had managed to squirm and squiggle her way past the brushes, mops and cleaning materials, and was lying in a space so tight that with the back of her head touching the floor, her nose brushed against the ceiling every time she moved.

  ‘What are you doing there, Jane?’ Meadows whispered, and she was not faking the concern in her voice – not even a little bit.

  ‘He’s outside,’ Jane moaned. ‘He’s going to get into the house, and he’s going to hurt me badly.’

  ‘He can’t get in,’ Meadows promised her. ‘Why don’t you go up to your room and have a little rest?’

  ‘No!’ Jane said, and she shook her head so violently that she hit the ceiling three or four times, and caused a fine white powder-dust to hover like an aura around her skull. ‘No,’ she repeated, ‘my room is all that I have left – the only thing in the whole world that’s mine. If he hurts me in my room, it won’t be mine anymore. So let him punish me down here if he wants to – but I’m not going upstairs.’

  ‘You’re upsetting Lizzie, you know,’ Meadows said, with just a hint of severity in her tone. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I …’

  ‘She’s waiting to go upstairs with you. Please don’t make her any more distressed than she already is.’

  ‘All right,’ Jane agreed miserably. She began the slow, undignified process of backing out around bottles of cleaning fluid and wellington boots. ‘But you can’t let him in. You have to promise me, you won’t let him in.’

  As Meadows helped her to her feet, she was shocked by how fragile Jane felt, and how old she had suddenly become. Even her smell had changed, and she was emanating the odour of a wounded creature which cannot work out how or why this horrible thing has happened, but knows that death is just awaiting the signal to come and collect her.

  ‘Take her arm,’ Meadows whispered to Lizzie Grimshaw. ‘Help her upstairs.’ But before she let go of Jane’s arm herself, she said, ‘I need you to tell me you don’t want to see him – if that is how you feel.’

  ‘I was hiding in the cupboard from him!’ Jane exclaimed. ‘Doesn’t that tell you anything?’

  ‘Yes, it does, but I’m afraid that isn’t enough,’ Meadows said. ‘If I’m to be on solid legal ground when I talk to him, I need you to be more explicit.’

  Jane nodded weakly, and that part of her brain which still remembered being a logical businesswoman made her say, ‘I do not want to see my husband under any circumstances. Is that good enough?’

  ‘It’s good enough,’ Meadows confirmed.

  She waited until the two women had turned the bend in the stairs before she approached the front door.

  ‘Take six steps backwards, please, Mr Lofthouse,’ she said to the outline on the other side of the frosted glass.

  ‘I need to talk to my wife,’ Lofthouse replied, ‘so just open the door and let me in.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Meadows told him. ‘Before anything else can happen, you have to talk to me – and before you talk to me, you have to take six steps away from this door.’

  There was a hesitation on the other side, then she both heard Lofthouse’s angry footfalls on the gravel and read his angry body language as he followed her instructions.

  She counted out his six steps, and then she opened the door, though keeping the chain in place.

  ‘I’m not talking to you through a gap,’ Lofthouse said. ‘I’ve done what you asked of me, and now I want something in return – which is to speak to you face-to-face.’

  ‘Do I have your word that you won’t try to force your way into here if I give you the chance?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Well, of course you’ve got my word,’ Lofthouse replied, exasperated. ‘What kind of man do you think I am?’

  I think you’re the kind who beats his wife, Meadows said silently.

  But she opened the door anyway, and they got their first proper look at each other.

  He was about the same age as his wife, Meadows thought. He seemed intelligent, dynamic and sporty. What he did not look was sensitive, but, even so, anyone who didn’t know the Lofthouses well would have taken them for the perfect golden couple.

  ‘Six weeks ago, my wife left our house without so much as a word,’ Lofthouse said. ‘Anything could have happened to her, and I’ve been frantic with worry.’

  ‘So why didn’t you report it to the police?’

  ‘And make myself a laughing stock? Tell the whole world that I’m a man who has no control over his own wife? No, thank you!’

  ‘If you didn’t report it, you can’t have been that concerned,’ Meadows said.

  ‘I still wouldn’t know where she was if some thoughtful soul hadn’t slipped an anonymous letter in my postbox,’ Lofthouse said, ignoring the comment. ‘So now I’ve finally tracked her down, and I want to talk to her.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to talk to you,’ Meadows replied. ‘She’s been quite clear about that.’

  ‘And why is that? Is it because you’ve told her not to – because you’ve been poisoning her mind against me?’

  ‘No,’ Meadows said.

  ‘I don’t believe you!’

  Meadows shrugged. ‘Please yourself what you believe. I only give advice when I’m asked for it, and Jane hasn’t asked for any.’

  ‘You are seriously trying to tell me that you’re capable of keeping that big fat mouth of yours shut?’ Lofthouse asked disbelievingly.

  ‘I’ll say this once more,’ Meadows told him, with an edge to her voice. ‘I didn’t give Jane any advice because she never asked for any – but if she had asked, I’d have told her to steer well clear of you.’

  ‘Because you think she’s a battered wife?’

  ‘Because I know she’s a battered wife.’

  ‘I’ve no idea why she should want to tell you such a ludicrous story, but it’s simply not true,’ Lofthouse said.

  ‘I’ve seen the bruises,’ Meadows countered.

  ‘Oh, I see! You’ve seen the bruises! And do you know how she got those bruises?’ Lofthouse asked, with a supercilious sneer.

  ‘No, so why don’t you tell me?’ Meadows suggested.

  The sneer disappeared like magic.

  He thinks he’s just made a big mistake! Meadows thought. He’s decided he’s lost control of this confrontation – that he’s given away too much information.

  But too much information about what?

  ‘Well, how did Jane get those bruises?’ she said, to pressurize him.

  ‘They … they were self-inflicted,’ Lofthouse said uncomfortably.

  But Meadows was both an ex-policewoman and a practicing sadomasochist, and she knew the difference between injuries that were self-inflicted and those that weren’t.

  ‘There seems very little point in continuing this discussion,’ she told Lofthouse.

  But he was not a man to give up easily, and the message coming from his cold hard eyes was that he was searching his brain for a new basis on which to launch a verbal attack which would make her crumble.

  There was a horrid fascination in watching his mental processes at work.

  He ran his eyes quickly up and down her body.

  Were there any physical defects he could exploit?

  No, her figure was neat, and her face, whilst unconventional, was certainly attractive and could almost be described as beautiful. Besides, even if she had defects, it was obvious from the way she held herself that she was comfortable enough in her own skin for that not to bother her.

  Then his glance fell on the brass plaque which was fixed to the wall, next to the doorbell, and a look of almost demonic happiness came to his face.

  Overcroft House

  Residential Accommodation

  Warden: Ms Kate Meadows, MBE

  Visits by appointment only

  ‘Is that you?’ he asked. ‘Ms Kate Meadows, MBE.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate agreed.

  He was an intelligent man, but not an imaginative one, and she could almost hear the gears in his brutish brain meshing.

  People like her treasure their decorations above all else, he was telling himself. Destroy her belief in its value, and you destroy her own sense of self-worth.

  He didn’t know – how could he? – that Kate had only accepted the medal because she could see its potential as a fundraising tool for the shelter. He didn’t know – because she’d taken pains to hide it from everyone – that she was an ‘honourable’ by birth and a countess by virtue of a short unhappy marriage.

  ‘I know so many women like you,’ he said, ‘women who selflessly dedicate themselves to good works for twenty or thirty years. But it’s not selfless at all, is it? Because all that time you spend scrubbing the floors and cleaning up other people’s shit, you’re praying that one day a letter will arrive inviting you down to Buckingham Palace, to meet the queen. And when it does come, it makes all the work you’d put into your job – all the suffering, all the dispiriting moments – finally seem worthwhile, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You’re wasting your breath,’ she said.

  And there must have been real conviction in the words, because for a moment he hesitated. Then, his own self-belief – his own arrogance – was back in control again.

  ‘The great day finally arrived,’ Lofthouse continued, in an almost dreamy voice. ‘You were whisked to Buckingham Palace to see the queen. You joined an excited line of people, and when it came to your turn, she pinned the medal on you herself. Did she say anything?’

  ‘Yes,’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She asked me if I’d come far.’

  ‘Well, that was nice of her, wasn’t it?’

  Oh, you bastard, Meadows thought.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking down at the ground – playing along with his game.

  ‘And was the Duke of Edinburgh with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he speak to you?’

  Yes, he’d reminded Meadows of the great fun they’d had the last time they’d met, at a rather prestigious shoot in the Scottish Highlands.

  ‘No, he didn’t speak to me,’ she said aloud.

  ‘How long did your visit to the queen last? Twenty seconds?’

  ‘A bit more than that.’

  ‘Let’s call it thirty then. If you like, we’ll even call it forty. Was it any longer than that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So that’s what your lifetime of effort is worth – forty seconds of their time. And what does that make your precious medal worth?’

  ‘The medal has its uses,’ Meadows said.

  ‘I have an OBE myself,’ Lofthouse said. ‘That’s superior to your medal – and I didn’t have to clean out a single stinking toilet to get that.’

  Meadows smiled. ‘Well, as long as it makes you happy.’

  ‘Don’t pretend it doesn’t hurt that I’ve made you realize how unimportant you are,’ Lofthouse said, furious that his attack was failing to produce the response he wanted.

  ‘Only people who are really unimportant care about how unimportant they are,’ Meadows told him.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Lofthouse said. ‘You’re lecturing me, aren’t you?’

  Meadows shrugged. ‘Well, somebody has to.’

  ‘How would you react if I pushed you out of the way, and went to see my wife?’ Lofthouse demanded.

  ‘I suppose I’d be rather disappointed that you hadn’t kept your word.’

  ‘I can live with disappointing a little guttersnipe like you,’ Lofthouse snarled. ‘So, would you only be disappointed, or would you actually try to do something about it?’

  ‘I’d phone the police.’

  ‘And they’d send round a couple of PC Plods. The plods would ask me for an explanation, and I’d put them in touch with some very high-ranking policemen who happen to be members of my lodge – and that would be the end of that.’ He smirked. ‘So when you think about it, if you want to prevent me getting in, you’re going to have to stop me yourself.’