The Sleeping and the Dead by Ann Cleeves

away,’ Rosie said, using the full names as if it were a formal announcement. As in ‘I, Melanie, take you, Joseph’. That wouldn’t
surprise her either. Joe was besotted enough to do it and he’d always been into crazy gestures. Melanie’s parents would be delighted. Melanie would have a full-time minder and they
could go back to the real business of making money.
    ‘Isn’t Melanie’s name Gillespie?’ her mother asked.
    Rosie hardly heard. She was imagining Mel’s dress, the church, the flowers. Her as chief bridesmaid. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Melanie Gillespie.’
    ‘And her dad’s the businessman?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    When she’d first asked Melanie what her father did she’d said he ran a chip shop. Computer chips, it turned out. He’d set up a huge plant on the site of a derelict factory, was
a major local hero because of all the jobs it provided.
    ‘He was on the television again tonight,’ Hannah said.
    Mel’s dad was always on the television.
    ‘They’re going to the Algarve,’ Rosie said. ‘Mel and Joe.’
    ‘Will you be at a bit of a loose end then?’
    ‘I have got other friends!’
    For a while she had been watching a small, plump man hovering just out of her mother’s line of vision. She thought he had been listening in, waiting for them to finish their conversation.
Now he was approaching and Hannah stood up to greet him. Rosie thought, She planned this all along. She knew I’d not come if she warned me.
    ‘This is Arthur,’ Hannah said.
    Rosie could tell her mother was nervous and decided to be gracious. ‘Hi.’
    ‘Arthur works with me at the prison. He’s a psychologist.’
    Rosie nodded. What could you say?
    ‘Rosie was just telling me that two of her friends are going on holiday.’ Hannah shot her the look Rosie remembered from Sunday-afternoon tea at her grandma and granda’s house.
A pleading look which said, Please behave, please don’t show me up.
    Rosie said nothing. Arthur smiled. It would be easy, Rosie thought, to be taken in by that smile.
    Hannah continued, ‘I was just going to tell her about my trip.’
    ‘What trip?’
    ‘There’s a school reunion. I thought I should go . . .’
    ‘Great. Can I come?’ It was a malicious offer. She didn’t want her mother to go off with this little round man with the beguiling smile. She wanted to pay Hannah back for
treating her like a six-year-old.
    ‘Do you really want to?’
    Hannah looked so pathetically grateful that Rosie couldn’t say she didn’t mean it. Anyway, what was wrong with running away for a couple of days?
    ‘Why not?’
    Arthur smiled again as if this was what he’d been planning all along and he went to the bar for drinks.

Chapter Eight
    Although Hannah had avoided Sally since she’d left the town to go to university, she had kept in touch with her friend’s news. Sally had gone up in the world since
they’d first become mates in Cranford. At school she’d lived with her parents on a small council estate, a couple of streets which ran down the hill to the west of the town. Her father
had been a barber. Her mother had worked in the chemist’s in the high street. There’d been a younger sister, a pretty child called Joanne. Hannah’s dad had worked in the only bank
in the town and they’d owned their own home, but the families’ lives had been very similar. There’d been an emphasis on good manners and tidiness. Of course, after Hannah’s
father had died things were never the same again. Then she’d loved spending time with Sal’s family. Everything in their little house had seemed safe and respectable.
    Sally didn’t go to university. She’d had no academic ambition though she’d been bright enough. Instead she’d got a job as office junior on the local paper. She was still
there in a more glorified form, writing features and running the women’s page. She’d sent Hannah a cutting when she first got the post as features editor. There had been a photograph