Monday morning was blue skies, but Zoë traced a stiff wind in the limbs of next door’s trees, and knew clouds might turn up out of nowhere. Spring days could turn to autumn. The lift your heart got might be the kind that dropped you at the next exit. Sunday, she’d written to Amory Grayling, a report which didn’t mention Victoria Ingalls. It did, though, outline Zoë’s reasons for thinking ‘Alan Talmadge’ an assumed name. He was married, Zoë concluded, leaving Grayling to draw what he wanted from this – that people are not framed for good behaviour; that where men love they also lie, and that some men lie and call it love. These mild conclusions would be based on incomplete knowledge, but Grayling didn’t want to learn that Caroline had been pushed under that train. By this stage, he might no longer even want to find Talmadge – a guilty adulterer now; not a bereaved lover – but that was barely relevant. Zoë had made her own connections, to Caroline, to Victoria, and would keep pushing doors, regardless of what lay behind them.
