The Safe House by Nicci French

just keep your mouth closed. Why didn’t Danny and Elsie come home? ‘This time is important for me. I’m sorry about the girl but…’
    ‘Yes,’ said Thelma. ‘She needs help.’ She popped a whole custard cream into her mouth and chomped vigorously.
    ‘I was about to say that I’m sorry about her; however, I don’t think that it’s…’ The sentence trailed away and I couldn’t remember how I was going to end it. ‘How long did you say?’
    ‘I didn’t. And you must make your own mind up.’
    ‘Yeah yeah. Detective Inspector Baird, how long?’
    ‘It would not be more than six weeks, probably much less.’
    I stayed silent and thought furiously.
    ‘If I were to consider it, how would I know I wasn’t putting my daughter at risk? If I decide to have her.’
    ‘It would be discreet,’ Baird said. ‘Completely. Nobody would know she was here. How would they? It’s just a precaution.’
    ‘Thelma?’
    She peered up at me, a troll come in from the cold. ‘You’re in the right area of expertise, you live near by. You were the obvious choice.’
    ‘If she came,’ I said feebly, ‘when would she arrive?’
    His brow wrinkled as if he were recalling the departure time of a commuter train.
    ‘Oh,’ he said casually. ‘We thought tomorrow morning would be an appropriate time. Say, nine-thirty.’
    ‘Appropriate? Make it eleven-thirty.’
    ‘Good, and that means that her doctor will be able to accompany her,’ said Baird. ‘So that’s all settled.’
    Thelma took my hand as she left.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, but she wasn’t.
    ‘I’ll be gone before she arrives.’
    ‘Danny, you don’t need to go; I just think it would be a bad idea to be round when…’
    ‘Don’t talk shit, Sam. When you were deciding about this girl, did I come into the equation?’ He stared at me. ‘I didn’t, did I? You could at least have talked to me about it before saying yes, pretended that it mattered what I thought about it. Is this girl’s future more important to you than ours?’
    I could have said that he was right and I was sorry, except I knew I wasn’t going to go back on my agreement to take the girl. I could have pleaded. I could have become angry in response. Instead I tried to reconcile our differences in the old familiar way. I put my arms around him, I pushed back his hair and stroked his stubbly cheek and kissed the corner of his furious mouth and started to undo the button on his shirt. But Danny pushed me away angrily.
    ‘Fuck me and I’ll forget, eh?’
    He pulled on his shoes and picked up the jacket which he’d slung over a chair.
    ‘Are you going?’
    ‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’ He paused in the doorway. ‘Bye Sam, see you. Maybe.’

Eight
    The most tiresome thing about having a guest – or in this case a pseudo-guest – coming to call is the apparent tradition that you are meant to clear up for them. Fiona Mackenzie was due mid morning. This gave me a couple of hours after taking Elsie to school to dither around the house. I had to be tactical about this. Clearing up the house in any meaningful sense was obviously impractical. Establishing order was an even more forlorn hope which needed to be explored in detail with Sally. But Sally was very slow and she had a complicated emotional life and any conversation with her got lost in its labyrinths. For the moment I had time to push a few things out of the way so that doors could be entered, hallways walked along, chairs sat on.
    The surface of the kitchen table was almost invisible, but it only took the transfer of Elsie’s bowl and cup into the sink, the stowing of her cereal packets into a cupboard, the disposal of a few days’ worth of opened envelopes in the bin, and almost half of it was available for use once more. I pushed the window above the kitchen sink slightly up and opened the door to the garden. The house would at least smell a bit cleaner. I wandered up and down looking for anything else that I could tidy