Her name was Kaylee Adams. She was twenty-one years old, and she’d worked at the bank since leaving school. She’d met Jenner a few months ago in a local pub. Her friends had warned her to stay away from him — he was a villain, a crook, he’d done time in prison — but that was precisely what Kaylee found attractive about him. She liked “bad boys.” She liked flirting with danger. She liked the thrill of it all.

The only thing Jenner liked about Kaylee was the fact that she worked in the bank. He didn’t find her particularly good-looking, or even good company, and he positively despised her pretentious attraction to him. He knew exactly what he was to her — a bored girl’s plaything — and although that sickened him, he was happy to take full advantage of it.

Kaylee had told him all about Gordon, as she always (sneeringly) called him. She’d told Jenner that although Gordon was almost thirty years old, he still lived at home with his mother, and she still treated him like a little boy.

“She’s always calling him at work to ask him stupid questions,” Kaylee said, “like what he wants for dinner, or did he remember to take his scarf and gloves with him this morning, stuff like that . . . it’s pathetic.”

Maybe it is, thought Jenner, but it’s a lot better than having a mother who was so messed up on drink and drugs when you were a baby that she regularly forgot to feed you, and quite often didn’t change your nappy for days, and didn’t even put up a fight when social services finally took you away from her . . .

“What about the father?” Jenner asked Kaylee.

She shook her head. “I don’t know . . . he doesn’t live with them, I know that, but I don’t know anything else about him. Gordon’s never even mentioned him.”

“So it’s just the two of them in the house.”

“Yeah.”

Kaylee had gone on to assure Jenner that on Christmas Eve Gordon would be back home by one o’clock at the latest.

“The bank closes at twelve,” she explained. “Then most of us are going to the King’s Head for a few drinks. It’s kind of a Christmas tradition.”

“Does Gordon go with you?”

“Only for about ten minutes, thank God. He forces himself to make an appearance — he thinks it’s good for staff morale — but once he’s bought the first round of drinks, and taken a microscopic sip from his half pint of lager and lime, he makes his excuses and leaves us to it.”

“So what time is it by then?”

Kaylee shrugged. “About twelve thirty. He’s got to walk back to the bank to pick up his car, which is another five or ten minutes —”

“Then another ten minutes to drive home.”

“Yeah.”

“So he’s back by one.”

“Yeah.”

“As long as he doesn’t stay longer in the pub, or do some Christmas shopping in town, or stop off in Costa for a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich . . .”

Kaylee laughed.

“What?” said Jenner.

“Well, for a start, Gordon doesn’t drink coffee. It doesn’t agree with him, apparently. The only thing he drinks is tea from a flask that his mummy makes for him. And as for Christmas shopping . . .” Kaylee shook her head. “He will have done it all months ago. And he never stays longer in the pub.” She shrugged. “He’s Gordon — you can set your watch by him.”

Let’s just hope you’re right, Jenner thought, smiling at her. For your sake.