Payback

by Roberta Kray

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Domestic Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

'Roberta Kray really is the queen of crime writing!' 5-star Reader Review

Some secrets are worth killing for.

Julia left London years ago, but now she's back - and so are the ghosts of her past. Angel Glover was her childhood best friend until the day everything changed.

Now Angel is dead, and Julia is certain it wasn't just some tragic accident.

Determined to uncover the truth, she starts asking questions. But the Mansfield estate hasn't changed. The same faces are there - Tom, Lindsey, Pauline, Frankie - the ones she and Angel used to roll with. And they know more than they're letting on.

The deeper Julia digs, the more the warnings come. Even Inspector Vyse tells her to tread carefully. But Julia's not going anywhere. She owes Angel that much.

And on these streets, loyalty is a dangerous thing - because some secrets are worth killing for...

Readers agree, no one does crime like Kray!
'Brilliant read as always. Loved the characters. Can't wait until the next book' 5-star Reader Review
'So many complex characters in this one! Such a heart warming ending though. I highly recommend this book' 5-star Reader Review
'This book was excellent from start to finish, Once you start to read it you will be turning your pages to find out what happens next especially as it full of great twists and turns that will have you gripped' 5-star Reader Review
'Roberta Kray delivers another captivating story with this gangland novel. True to her usual high standards, the book presents an intriguing mystery featuring a mix of compelling characters' 5-star Reader Review
'The writing style is tense, with the different storylines seamlessly intertwined and plenty of twists and turns. I couldn't put the book down. What a treat. This will keep you up until late at night but in a good way' 5-star Reader Review

Release date: November 13, 2025

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 423

Sample

It was by pure chance that Julia bumped into him on the Strand, and she would have walked right past if he hadn’t stopped, done a double take, and said, ‘Julia Reeve!’

She gave a vague smile while she waited for her brain to roll through its face-recognition process and come up with a name. Although he did look familiar, she couldn’t quite place him. A client? A business associate? A neighbour? A friend of a friend?

‘Tom Finch,’ he said, his face dropping a little.

‘Of course!’ she said. ‘Tom. I’m so sorry. It’s been such a long time.’ She hadn’t seen him since she was fourteen. They had been at school together and lived on the same estate in Kellston, until her mother had decided they should leave London. Tom looked the same and yet different, still tall and gangly, still with that earnest expression in his eyes, but without the spots. ‘God, how are you?’

‘Not too bad, considering. Still trying to come to terms with it all, to be honest.’

Julia looked at him, confused. ‘Come to terms with it?’

‘About Angel,’ he said.

‘What about her?’

Tom’s hand flew up and briefly raked through his floppy brown hair. He shifted from one foot to the other, his eyes refusing to meet hers. ‘Oh, shit. You don’t know? You haven’t heard?’

Julia felt a tremor run through her. She had a bad feeling, a terrible feeling, and wanted to cover her ears, to not hear what was coming next. Angela Glover – known to everyone as Angel – had been her best friend back in the day. They had been inseparable, devoted, sharers of each other’s secrets. And now … ‘No, I haven’t heard. What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Angel’s dead. She died a month ago.’

Julia shook her head. Even though she’d suspected what he was going to say, she still couldn’t accept it. ‘She can’t be. How? How did it happen?’

‘She drowned in the River Lea.’

‘What?’

‘On her birthday. It looks like it was suicide, or some kind of awful accident. They didn’t find her body for three days.’ Tom paused and then said, ‘Sorry, I thought you’d know. I thought that was why you were here, that you’d come back for the funeral.’

‘No, I work here now. I’ve just started a new job.’ This wasn’t strictly true – she’d been in London for the past nine months – but she felt guilty and ashamed for not getting in touch with Angel. Damn it! Why hadn’t she? Well, she knew the answer to that but didn’t want to dwell on it right at this minute. ‘They’re only just having the funeral?’

‘Post-mortem and stuff. It’s on Monday, twelve o’clock at St James’s, the church by the cemetery. You should come. Renee will be pleased to see you.’

When Julia thought of Renee, of what she must be going through, her heart turned over. Renee had been like a second mum to her, the kind of mum she’d have preferred if she was being honest – reliable, attentive, and not forever rushing off to the next political rally or peace protest or feminist work group. ‘Monday?’ Only three days away. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to get the time off, but I’ll try. How is Renee doing?’

‘Oh, you know,’ Tom said, shrugging.

There was a brief, awkward silence. Under normal circumstances they would have asked the usual questions about jobs and homes and families, but Angel’s death made all that seem mundane and irrelevant.

‘It must be awful for her,’ Julia said eventually.

Tom nodded and started to edge away. ‘Well, maybe I’ll see you on Monday.’

‘Yes,’ Julia said. ‘Of course. I’ll try my best.’

They parted then, each going in different directions. As Julia headed back to the office she couldn’t stop thinking about Angel. Suicide? Why would she take her own life? Especially when she had a son to take care of. And then she remembered that she hadn’t even asked about Jack. He would be eight now. Poor kid. Angel had got pregnant at sixteen, had him at seventeen, and been a single parent ever since so far as she knew. Although she hadn’t raised him on her own; Renee had been there to help. Renee was the sort who was always there. She should go to the funeral.

Julia went down Southampton Street, past the shops which for once she didn’t stop to look in, through the dark blue door and up the stairs to the office. There was the usual Friday-afternoon rush with everyone trying to tie up loose ends before the weekend. People on phones, people wading through piles of paper. She walked to the far corner, went through the door, took the ham salad sandwich out of her bag, and laid it on a serviette on her desk.

She had thought when she’d got the job with Harley Jenks – a public relations company within spitting distance of Covent Garden piazza – that she’d be entering a glamorous world of endless possibilities. But nothing could have been further from the truth. She was on the lowest possible rung of the ladder and as such had been landed with all the clients that no one else wanted – the awkward ones, the stupid ones, the boring ones and the ones who were more trouble than they were worth.

She glanced over at Cressida, her immediate boss, and said, ‘Do you think I could book Monday off? I’ve got a funeral to go to. I know it’s short notice, but I’ve only just heard.’

‘Oh, someone close?’

‘An old school friend.’

‘Oh,’ Cressida said again. ‘Sorry to hear it. Yes, I’m sure that’ll be fine.’

Somehow Cressida made it sound like she wasn’t very sorry at all. And no sooner were the words out of her mouth than she frowned and said, ‘Haven’t you got that dreadful Apostle man coming in on Monday?’

‘I can reschedule.’

‘Make sure you don’t forget.’

Which, in translation, meant that she didn’t want to get landed with him. Ivor Apostle was a new client, a businessman who owned a security firm, pubs, several wine bars and a couple of nightclubs. There were rumours that he moved in criminal circles, that he didn’t always operate within the law, and it was these sorts of rumours that he preferred to keep out of the press. ‘I won’t forget. Is he really that dreadful?’

‘Thinks he’s God’s gift by all accounts, but you can manage him. He likes a pretty face, so use it to your advantage. You’ll be okay. Just keep him sweet and tell him whatever he wants to hear.’

Cressida Hale was what Julia’s mother, Ellie, would call hard-bitten – ruthlessly ambitious and happy to play the men at their own game. She was a curvy redhead, knocking on forty, who dressed in power suits with shoulder pads, and worshipped Mrs Thatcher. Ellie wouldn’t have approved of her. Ellie believed in equality, but not at the price of women behaving like men. It should be the other way round she always said, but in reality the chances of that were slim.

‘Why was he taken on if he’s that dreadful?’ Julia asked.

Cressida rubbed the thumb and fingers of her right hand together. ‘Money, hon. Harley can smell it a mile away. If Apostle’s prepared to pay, then Harley’s happy to take his cash.’

Except, of course, he wouldn’t be the one dealing with him, Julia thought. She flicked back her long dark hair, rolled her hazel eyes and said, ‘Can’t wait to meet the guy. He sounds a dream.’

Cressida gave a snort. ‘You can handle him. Just flatter his ego and make him feel important.’

Julia nibbled a corner of her sandwich while Cressida took out her compact, viewed her face in the mirror, adjusted her hair and put on fresh lipstick. ‘Okay, I’m off,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘If anyone calls, I’m in a meeting for the rest of the afternoon.’

Cressida’s meetings usually took place in restaurants and bars, and always involved a lot of alcohol. She could drink any man under the table. Her monthly expense account was eye-watering, but no one ever challenged it. Cressida got results, was loved by her clients, and brought in a massive amount of business for the company.

Julia wanted to be Cressida. She wanted to be rich and successful, respected and admired. She wanted to be as confident as she was. Alone in the office, she took another bite of her sandwich. Through the plate-glass window, she could see what was left of the rest of the staff, most of them ex-public schoolboys with a sense of entitlement as big as their salaries. To rise to the top in a business like this was difficult enough, but when you were a woman, it was ten times harder. The eighties were drawing to a close, and although the prime minister was female, the world was still run by men.

Angel was dead.

Julia felt the shock of it run through her again. The sandwich stuck in her throat. She drank some water, swallowing hard. Already she was dreading Monday. All the old faces reviving memories she’d rather forget. She had turned her back on the past, left it all behind, or at least she’d thought she had.

After it had happened – it still clung to her conscience like a bad smell – her mother had decided it was time to get out of London. A fresh start with some Suffolk country air. An old rambling house with twisting corridors, uneven floors and rooms that always smelled of damp. A new communal life with Ellie’s lentil-eating, yoga-practising, mainly lesbian friends. But Julia hadn’t kicked up a fuss. Anything had been better than staying here.

‘I’ll write,’ she’d promised Angel. The Glovers didn’t have a phone then. One more expense they could do without. ‘You can come and see me. Or I’ll come here.’

But the letters had dwindled and only one visit had ever taken place, a few months after Angel had given birth to Jack. Julia had cooed over the baby, said how lucky Angel was, but secretly she’d been horrified. She had never been maternal and couldn’t imagine being tied down to a baby at seventeen, her future dictated by a red-faced howling bundle who would probably grow up to resent and dislike her. Accordingly, the little white pill went into her mouth every morning, regular as clockwork.

When she’d taken the job here, she’d always known there was a chance of bumping into someone from the past, but the more time had passed the less likely it seemed to happen. Until today. Until Tom Finch had appeared from nowhere. If she’d had any sense, she’d have stayed well clear of London. Or had she been tempting providence, pushing her luck as far as she could, seeing if karma would eventually catch up with her?

The guilt she felt was wound around her innards, always there no matter how hard she tried to ignore it. Like a parasitic worm sucking the joy out of her life. That was why she hadn’t contacted Angel. That was why she’d kept her distance. Although the external scars had healed, Angel had been left with a different kind of damage: something irreversible had happened to her brain, leaving gaps in her memory, the occasional stutter when she spoke and lapses in concentration. She would repeat herself, forgetting what she’d said, and stare into the middle distance as if some entity, invisible to everyone else, was distracting her attention.

Angel was dead.

Julia wasn’t responsible for that. And yet she wondered if in some way she was, that what had happened when they were fourteen had cast such a terrible shadow over Angel’s life that she had always been fated to die young. Could that be true? She pulled the crust off her sandwich and grimaced. A guilty conscience was a terrible thing.

Perhaps she wouldn’t go to the funeral. It would be too hard, too emotional, too upsetting. She didn’t have to. No one was holding a gun to her head. And booking the time off didn’t count as a commitment. ‘I’ll try my best,’ is what she’d told Tom. He would just presume that work had got in the way.

But she knew that it would be cowardly not to go. Some things had to be faced up to, no matter how daunting they were. It was only an hour out of her life. She could manage that, couldn’t she? And she owed it to Angel to say a final goodbye.

Julia had changed her mind a hundred times over the weekend, leaning one way and then the other, leaving it until the last minute on Monday morning to get dressed in a black suit, black polo-neck jumper and boots. She put her hair up and then let it down again. She stared at her reflection, seeing the gawky fourteen-year-old girl clearly visible beneath the make-up and smart clothes. When she had first come back to London, she had thought of herself as a different person, cool and mature, but none of that was evident now.

It’s only an hour, she told herself for the umpteenth time.

She picked up her bag and left.

As the bus swayed through the Camden streets, she gazed out of the window at the place that had become her home over the past nine months. She liked its mixture of scruffy and smart – she lived in the scruffier part, but it didn’t take that long to walk to Regent’s Park where the surrounding houses were grand and imposing and carried the distinctive smell of money. She would like to own one of those in the future.

A long way in the future, she thought. For now, her wages barely covered her rent and bills, with whatever was left going on clothes. It was important to dress the part for her job, to always look smart and stylish, to give the impression of success even if it was only an illusion. It was easier for men – God, what wasn’t easier? – who only needed a couple of suits, a decent pair of shoes and half-a-dozen shirts and ties.

Julia’s mother had tried to instil in her the notion that appearances didn’t matter, that it was what was inside a person that was important – kindness and compassion – but that hardly cut it in the ruthless business of PR. There it was dog eat dog, the survival of the fittest. Why was she even thinking about this stuff? Because she didn’t want to think about the funeral.

The closer the bus got to the East End, the more jittery she became. She knew that she could still change her mind. She didn’t have to get off at Kellston station; she could take the coward’s way out and stay aboard or get off early and catch another bus back to Camden. But she wasn’t going to do that. She was going to do the right thing, the decent thing, and see it through.

She had thought a lot about Angel over the weekend, trying to remember the good times, that easy, comfortable friendship that had started in infant school and continued into their teens. They had hardly ever argued and had only ever fallen out once in any serious way. Their lives had been intertwined and they had told each other everything. It was hard to imagine having such a friendship again. The girls she hung out with now were more drinking partners than anything else, all people she had met through work: girls she liked well enough but who she would never bare her soul to.

How had she not heard about Angel’s death earlier? The truth was that she hardly ever read a newspaper, and certainly not from cover to cover. She hardly ever watched the news on TV either, knowing that the state of mankind with all its wars and suffering and casual violence would only depress her. Had it even been reported? Perhaps, at first, Angel had simply been a missing girl, one of many who walked out of their homes every day, and by the time her body was found it had been put down as suicide or an accident. Just another statistic, just another girl who never came home.

It was twenty to twelve when she got to the station. From here it was only a five-minute walk to the church. In order to avoid the conversations she didn’t want to have, she intended to get there exactly on time, and so she took the long way round, strolling slowly through the streets looking out for any changes that might have occurred in her absence. The café was still there, the pub, the florist and the newsagent. In fact, nothing much had altered in the years she’d been away. In the distance she could see the three tall towers of the Mansfield estate. Kellston remained as grey and run-down as it had always been.

Julia’s heart sank as she approached St James’s. It was a minute to twelve and despite her dawdling a small group was still huddled in the doorway. Among them she recognised Angel’s mum, Renee, looking much thinner and older than when they’d last met. She’d been hoping that she could slip in unnoticed as the service started but that clearly wasn’t going to happen now. Any chance of beating a hasty retreat was extinguished too as everyone turned to stare at her.

Julia went straight up to Renee and said, ‘I’m so sorry about Angel.’

‘Thank you for coming, love. It’s good to see you again.’

Julia thought she seemed dazed, not quite with it, her eyes blank and dull. Perhaps the doctor had given her something. ‘I still can’t believe she’s gone. It doesn’t feel real.’

Renee turned to the others and said, ‘You go in now. I’ll only be a minute.’ As soon as they were out of earshot, her eyes suddenly brightened. She gripped Julia’s arm and said in a fierce whisper, ‘I have to talk to you. After the funeral. We’re going to the Fox. You’ll come, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ Julia said, unable to refuse. ‘What do you—’

But before she could even finish asking what it was about, Renee had hurried into the church. Julia followed her, bemused by the request. What on earth did Renee want? Something she hadn’t wanted the others to know about, that was for sure. It made her feel uneasy, as if demands were going to be put on her, as if Renee was about to suck her into something she had no desire to be sucked into. Or was it about the past? Maybe Renee was about to confront her about it.

Julia felt her insides clench.

The church was surprisingly full, but it was impossible to know whether that was down to Angel’s popularity or the manner of her death. The story had probably been in the local paper and publicity always attracted people. Her eyes swept the congregation but most of the mourners were strangers to her. Renee went down to the front, close to where the coffin was. It gave Julia a start seeing the coffin there, covered in flowers.

Angel was dead.

It was hard to think of her body in that wooden box, her life snuffed out, her future a blank. The pungent smell of lilies filled the church.

Tom Finch beckoned from a pew three rows from the front, but Julia shook her head, preferring to squeeze in near the back. He was sitting with the old crowd, the three others who had made up their gang of six: Lindsay March, Pauline Archer and Frankie Hays. Lindsay and Frankie smiled, but not Pauline. This didn’t come as any great surprise. Pauline had never liked her; she had been one of those predatory girls, always trying to get between her and Angel, to steal Julia’s place as Angel’s best friend.

As the funeral began, Julia found her mind drifting back to those school days. There had been the popular kids, the swots, the sporty ones, the arty ones and the geeks. So where had the six of them fitted in? They had been the odds and sods, she supposed, the leftovers, the ones who didn’t belong anywhere else. But despite their disparities, they had been a solid little band, sticking together through thick and thin. Were they all still living in Kellston, or had they come back especially for the funeral?

The mourners were on their feet and halfway through ‘Abide with Me’ when Julia became aware of someone’s eyes on her. She glanced sideways across the aisle and met the gaze of a tall, dark-haired man in his thirties. He was staring at her so intently that she wondered if she knew him. But nothing about his face was familiar. And it wasn’t the sort of face you’d forget in a hurry – sharp and angular with high cheekbones and startlingly blue eyes. When he realised that she’d noticed, he quickly looked away.

The hymn came to an end and everyone sat down. She shot another quick sidelong glance at the man but now he was staring straight ahead with what seemed like a forced determination to not be caught in the act of looking at her again. It hadn’t been a lascivious look but something more inquiring, as if he was trying to place her, to make sense of her connection to Angel.

Julia listened to the priest talking about how much Angel had been loved and how much she’d be missed. She found herself thinking about what Tom Finch had told her, that she had died through suicide or an accident. What was she even doing alone by the river? Would she really have killed herself? That Angel could have been so unhappy filled her with a sudden grief. She would never have thought of Angel as the type to take her own life, but then she’d had no contact with her for years. People changed; things changed them.

And what about Jack? Julia strained her neck to peer towards the front. There was no sign of a boy. Perhaps Renee had decided that it would be too upsetting for him. She had never found out who Jack’s father was. Angel had refused to say. ‘He’s not important,’ was all she’d ever got out of her. ‘He’s not on the scene anymore.’ But that had been then, not now. Men, like bad pennies, had a habit of turning up again.

Julia had remembered Angel’s birthday on 14 October, had even considered getting in touch or sending a card. But in the end, she’d done neither. Regret swept over her. If only she’d reached out, made the effort, she might have been able to make a difference. Guilt raised its ugly head again. But she knew that she was giving her own influence too much importance, that they had been too far apart by then, that the old closeness had gone and couldn’t have been repaired overnight.

Her gaze returned to her erstwhile friends. Lindsay was dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled piece of tissue. Frankie put an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned in against him. Julia caught a brief glimpse of Pauline’s hands gripping the pew in front, her knuckles white against the black cuffs of her jacket. Tom sat very straight, his body rigid, as if it was taking every last effort of will to maintain his composure.

Eventually the service came to an end and the coffin was carried out, placed in the hearse and taken the short distance to Kellston cemetery. Here the priest intoned the burial rites while everyone shivered. She stayed at the back, watching and listening, her head bowed partly out of respect and partly to shield her face from the chill winter wind. She noticed that the tall, dark-haired man stood back too, even further away than her, as if to distance himself from the proceedings, to not intrude perhaps where he wasn’t wanted. That made her even more curious about him.

When the holy words had been said and the soil had been thrown – landing with a dull thud on the coffin – the mourners began to drift away in twos and threes, leaving Renee to spend some final moments alone. Tom broke off from the others and came over to her.

‘Nice service,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d make it. Are you coming to the Fox? We’re going for a few drinks.’

Julia was tempted to turn down the offer, to get on a bus and go home, but she’d already promised Renee that she’d be there. ‘Sure. Why not?’ She paused and then added, ‘Do you really think it was suicide? Was she depressed?’

Tom shrugged. ‘Hard to say. You never really know what’s going on inside someone else’s head.’

‘But she seemed all right?’

‘As all right as Angel ever was.’

Julia took a few seconds to absorb this. ‘If it was an accident, what was she even doing by the river?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Did she often go there?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Julia was aware of asking too many questions but couldn’t stop herself. ‘Had you seen her before she … I mean, that day. Had you seen her that day?’

‘We’d arranged to meet in the pub in the evening, but she never showed up.’

‘You must have been worried.’

‘Not really, not right away. Angel wasn’t always dependable. She’d make arrangements and then forget about them.’

‘But not on her birthday, surely. You don’t forget a thing like that.’

Tom dug a heel into the hard earth, his eyes fixed on the ground. ‘I suppose we just figured she’d got waylaid somewhere. We’re often in the Fox on a Saturday night, so it wasn’t as if she was putting us out in any major way. It wasn’t until the next day when Renee started ringing round that we knew something was wrong.’

Despite his explanation, Julia still found it odd that none of them had been concerned about her. But what did she know? She hadn’t been here. If Angel had made a habit of being unreliable, then maybe it was understandable.

They had begun to walk along the path, and she nodded towards the tall, dark man in front of them, lowering her voice as she spoke. ‘Do you know who that bloke is? He gave me a few funny looks in the church.’

‘You’ve lost your nose,’ Tom said. ‘You wouldn’t have had to ask ten years ago. You’d have sniffed him out from a hundred yards.’

‘Huh?’

‘The law,’ he said softly. ‘That’s DI Michael Vyse. He’s in charge of the investigation into Angel’s death.’

It was true that she’d have clocked him as a cop back when she was a teenager. They’d known even the plain-clothes officers then, and not just from the way they’d looked and acted. It had been like a sixth sense, an instinct, and a necessary one if you’d wanted to stay out of trouble. Not that they were ever major rule breakers, but the cops had always liked throwing their weight around.

‘And what has he found out in this investigation of his?’

‘Not much,’ Tom said.

‘So why is he here?’

‘To pay his respects, I suppose. And the rest.’

‘The rest?’

Tom pulled a face. ‘A spot of mild intimidation just in case one of us has a guilty conscience.’

‘Do you think anyone has?’

Tom shot her a look, his forehead creasing into a frown. ‘Why would any of us want to hurt Angel?’

‘I didn’t mean you,’ Julia said quickly, sensing that she’d offended him. ‘Or the others. I meant if there was anyone she was seeing, or someone she’d fallen out with. Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘No one that she told me about, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t someone.’

‘She wouldn’t have told you?’

Tom sighed into the cold air, his breath emerging as a wispy cloud. ‘We didn’t really talk about that kind of stuff. She might have told the girls, but they say she didn’t mention anyone.’

Julia was staring at the back of the police inspector’s head where the dark line of his hair met the creamy paleness of his neck. He was walking quickly, maybe towards the Fox. ‘What’s he like then, Michael Vyse?’

‘A bit of a shit, to be honest. I’d steer clear if I was you. He had us all down the station for hours, going over and over what happened that Saturday. Apparently, being in the pub surrounded by a hundred other people wasn’t a good enough alibi. He’s the sort of cop who isn’t much bothered by the actual law. I’m sure he’d love to pin it on one of us, but he’s not having much luck so far.’

Julia stopped in her tracks. ‘He thinks it might have been murder then?’

‘Hard to know what he thinks. Maybe he just enjoys giving people a hard time.’

Julia had no idea how much truth there was in that. And if Angel had been murdered then there was still a killer on the loose. Weren’t most people killed by someone they knew?

Julia had never been in the Fox before and was surprised by how warm and welcoming it was with its log fire and wood-panelled walls. She rubbed her frozen hands together trying to get the circulation back in them as she followed Tom through to the area at the back that had been set aside for the wake. There was a long trestle table there with sandwiches and sausage rolls, crisps, a few boxes of wine, some spirits, mixers and a keg of beer.

Already the pub was filling up, but the others had got there early enough to nab one of the booths. As Tom got chatting to some bloke she didn’t know, Julia helped herself to a glass of red – she needed it – then went over and sat down beside Lindsay. She had the feeling that the three of them had been talking about something they didn’t want her to hear because they instantly went quiet and there was an awkward silence.

Frankie was the one to break it, leaning across to pat her on the arm and say, ‘Hey, good to see you again, Julia. You’re looking well. What have you been up to?’

Julia gave them the same version that she’d given Tom, that she’d just started a new job in London, rented a flat and that everything was pretty hectic. ‘I wouldn’t even have known about Angel if I hadn’t bumped into Tom. It’s all so terrible, isn’t it?’

A murmur went round the table. There was a shaking of heads, a general agreement that it was all terrible.

‘It must be what, ten years since you last lived here?’ Frankie said. ‘No, eleven. Christ, where does all the time go? One minute we’re lurking behind the bicycle sheds having a sneaky fag and the next we’re all grown up and holding down jobs and getting married and having kids. Crazy, isn’t it?’

Of them all, Frankie had always been the most extroverted, the most voluble, not to mention the best looking, with his smooth caramel skin and chestnut eyes. He was small, slim and lithe, and had never gone through that spotty adolescent stage, but had morphed instead from pre-pubescent boy to teenager with what had seemed like effortless grace. Now, in his mid-twenties, he had the feline elegance of a dancer.