Necessary as Blood

kept it to herself.
    Although Gemma hadn‘t far to drive, it took her so long to find a place to park that Melody, having come on the Tube to Liverpool Street, was there before her.
    On this Wednesday afternoon the vendors‘ tables in the main arcade of the old market were stacked and folded, and the empty trading space seemed to echo a little wistfully under the great glass vault. Gemma found the salad kiosk round the corner, across the arcade from some of the trendier cafes. It had a buffet display on the inside, and a few tables with umbrellas out in the arcade, as if it were a pavement cafe.
    ‘I finally parked in the Bangla City car park,‘ Gemma said when she reached Melody. ‘I hope I don‘t get towed away.‘ The Asian supermarket was at the Brick Lane end of Fournier Street, and she had walked past Naz and Sandra‘s house on her way to the market. The house seemed to her to have taken on an indefinable air of desertion in the few days since she had first seen it.
    ‘What are you doing here?‘ Melody asked. ‘I thought your mum had been sent home.‘
    ‘She has. I — It‘s... complicated.‘
    Melody looked at her critically. ‘Well, I‘m starved, and you look positively knackered. Have you eaten?‘
    ‘No, but...‘
    ‘We‘ll get something. And then you can tell me about it.‘ When Gemma started to protest, Melody overrode her. ‘You have a seat and I‘ll choose. I know what‘s good here, and I know what you like.‘
    Gemma sat down at one of the little round tables, willing enough to be managed for the moment. The shade and the draughts of air moving through the arcade were welcomingly cool, and by the time Melody came out, with plastic boxes of salad and cups of coffee, she had begun to feel a bit more collected.
    The prospect of coffee made her quail, but then she thought perhaps she should approach it as if she were getting back on a horse — if she didn‘t erase the taste of Gail Gilles‘s horrible brew now, she might never be able to face coffee again.
    Melody had brought her a plain latte, her favourite coffee drink, and the salad was a colourful mix of beetroot, carrot, chickpeas and hard-boiled egg on salad leaves. ‘How did you know about this place?‘ Gemma asked, finding as she tasted the salad that she was hungry, after all. And the coffee was deliciously strong and mellow.
    ‘Oh, I like to come to the Saturday market.‘ Melody shrugged offhandedly, displaying her usual reluctance to discuss her personal life. ‘It‘s mostly touristy tat now, but there are still some good stalls. So, is this about the Malik case?‘ she asked, changing the subject before Gemma could question her further.
    Gemma finished a bite of salad, considering. She badly wanted someone to confide in — but how much could she say without betraying Kincaid‘s confidence?
    And she was Melody‘s boss, which made it even trickier to admit that she‘d skived off work and lied about going to visit her sick mum, especially when the one thing she absolutely could not say was that she‘d done it at Kincaid‘s instigation. But then, Melody was so solidly dependable, and had never let her down. If there was anyone she could talk to...
    ‘I went to see Gail Gilles,‘ she blurted out. ‘Sandra‘s mother. I wasn‘t supposed to, and I can‘t talk about it. I can‘t have been there, do you see?‘
    ‘Okay,‘ Melody said thoughtfully. ‘You weren‘t there. I get that. So what didn‘t you see when you weren‘t there?‘
    Gemma pushed her salad away, her appetite suddenly gone. ‘Oh, Melody, she‘s horrible. She doesn‘t care anything about Charlotte — in fact, I‘d say she actively dislikes her, or at least the idea of her. I don‘t think she actually knows her at all. And I can‘t imagine her looking after a child, although her own children seem to have grown up by hook or by crook. Crook being more like it.‘
    ‘The sons?‘
    Gemma nodded. ‘And I cannot talk to Janice Silverman about the things I saw that will probably be tidied up before social services make their first home visit, or about the things she said to me that she would probably never say to a social worker.‘
    ‘Eat,‘ Melody ordered, scooting the salad back in Gemma‘s direction. ‘And let‘s think about what else you can do. If she doesn‘t want Charlotte out of grandmotherly concern, then why is she willing to take on a child?‘
    Picking obediently at the shredded beetroot, which had stained the hard-boiled