Chapter 15: Three Years Ago, Partial

The bus home takes forty minutes at this hour. Callum sits at the back and watches the stops go past and does not think about Sable Marsh.

He thinks about the café instead. The particular quality of her grief, which was recent and unscabbed — the way she had stopped mid-sentence about Martin Fell's desk and done something careful with her face, the same thing Callum does when someone uses Nessa's name without knowing it is a loaded word. He recognised the technique. He did not say so.

She had asked him, at the end, to give her one reason that wasn't about protecting himself.