‘Actually,’ she says, ‘there’s something I want to ask Fly, and I wanted all of you to be here.’
Even Solly, who has been waving his arms at the approach of the first of Fly’s spoonfuls, stops and looks up with a concerned look on his face, making all of them laugh.
‘I want to adopt you,’ she says to Fly.
‘You what?’
‘A da-boooo!’ sings Solly.
‘I want to adopt you. I want us to be … tied. Make it legal.’
He looks at her for a moment. Then turns back to Solly with a new spoonful. ‘So you can nag me forever.’
‘So I can nag you forever, that’s right.’
She sits down and pushes a piece of lamb about the plate, where it gathers beads of couscous like a wet stone in sand.
‘Poon!’ says Solly, wrestling Fly for the spoon.
‘That’s right,’ Fly says to him. ‘Poon.’ He moons his face into Solly’s, nose to nose, and the boy screeches and clutches at Fly’s cheeks again with meaty hands.
‘Because I love you,’ Manon says.
‘Poon!’ insists Solly.
‘All right, chatty man,’ Fly says to him. ‘Here comes another one.’ He makes the spoon fly and Solly opens his mouth on cue. Then Fly takes a forkful from his own plate. ‘This stew is all right,’ he says. ‘Even though there is veg in there. Is this carrot?’
‘No, no,’ says Ellie. ‘You’re imagining it.’
‘Can I go round Zach’s to play on his PlayStation after?’ asks Fly.
‘Nope,’ says Manon.
Fly has turned to take another forkful of food. He and Manon chew on full mouthfuls, looking at each other.
‘Why do you ask when you know what the answer will be?’ Manon asks.
He shrugs. ‘For a laugh. I figure one day you’ll slip up.’
‘In your dreams. What do you reckon then, about what I just said? About becoming my son?’
‘Yeah. OK.’
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Detective Sergeant Graham McMillan of Cambridgeshire’s Major Crime Unit for his help with this book; also to Detective Sergeant Susie Hine of Cambridge CID for advice on the first draft. Inaccuracies are mine, not theirs.
Thank you Superintendent Jon Hutchinson for facilitating my visits to Cambridgeshire’s MCU.
For guidance on pathology, thank you Clare Craig, consultant pathologist at Imperial College NHS Trust. For postmortem and coroners detail, thanks to Michael Osborn, consultant histopathologist at Imperial.
For Maureen Dent’s Irish vernacular, thanks to Marissa McConville.
For Tony Wright’s Scots vernacular, thanks to Eileen MacCallum.
For advice on criminal law, thank you Daniel Burbidge.
The report published by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology in November 2011 into staff–prisoner relations in Whitemoor, on which Edith fictionally assisted as a researcher, is real. It is readily available online and is a riveting and humane read. Find it here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/217381/staff-prisoner-relations-whitemoor.pdf
Thanks Sandra Laville, of the Guardian, for advice on hacking and Soham.
Thanks to Sian Rickett, Susannah Waters, Alexandra Shelley, Daniel Burbidge, John Steiner, Deborah Steiner and Zoe Ross for careful reading and good advice. And to Katie Espiner and Andrea Walker for brilliant editing. Thank you Eleanor Jackson, for going out to bat for me Stateside. To Sarah Ballard, thank you for everything, as always. Thank you Tom Happold for being my first and last reader and for all your support. And George and Ben Happold for bundling in from school and filling the house with joyful noise after the silence of the attic.
About the Author
Susie Steiner began her writing career as a news reporter first on on local papers, then on the Evening Standard, the Daily Telegraph and The Times. In 2001 she joined the Guardian, where she worked as a commissioning editor for eleven years. Her first novel, Homecoming – described as ‘truly exceptional’ by the Observer – was published by Faber & Faber in 2013. She lives in London with her husband and two children.