“Do I need a lawyer?”

Jane’s voice trembles. She’s never been interviewed by the police before. She’s trying to remember the last time she even spoke to a police officer and thinks it must have been nineteen years ago when she was nine weeks pregnant with Sissy, driving (above the speed limit) home from her granddad’s funeral where she had eaten too many ham biscuits, causing the top button of her jeans to pop off when she sat down in the driver’s seat. When the policeman said “Do you know why I pulled you over?” she burst into tears, all the emotions of her granddad dying, and Dan not being able to be with her because he had to work, and the embarrassment of her pants being undone rushing to the surface at once. The man in uniform was so bewildered, he pretended he had a call on the radio and darted back to his car, shouting, “Slow down and be safe!” over his shoulder.

She’s only asking because everyone who’s ever seen a cop drama knows you’re always supposed to ask for a lawyer. This police officer—Kip, as he had introduced himself, and Jane thought that was a rather jaunty name for a cop. Informal. Missing the gravitas that someone who wore a pistol holster slung round his waist should inherently ­have—cocks his head to the right. Dirt mars his forehead and his hair is mussed. Jane thinks she sees a twig stuck in it, and she wonders for the first time what she must look like. He grins kindly.

“No, I don’t think that will be necessary.” He pauses. “Unless you’re secretly one of the criminals.”