Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid Page B

days. Cute, loving boys who had scampered round their house engaged in all sorts of fantasy games had morphed into grunting, smelly creatures who regarded communication with adults as somehow letting the side down. It was, Kathy said, some kind of miracle that Seth had escaped this particular aspect of the rites of passage into manhood.
    ‘He does have terrible taste in music,’ Julia had pointed out more than once, as if that counterbalanced his better qualities. She had no idea where he’d acquired his taste for early grunge; she was just grateful that so far it hadn’t infected his wardrobe too much.
    ‘It could be worse,’ Kathy always said. ‘He could be into musicals.’
    Seth’s inability to keep anything to himself meant Julia and Kathy were relaxed about his computer use. Not so relaxed that they didn’t have the appropriate parental controls bolted on, with all the extra security that Kathy used to protect the websites she designed. But they didn’t physically look over his shoulder, though Kathy routinely checked his RigMarole page for weirdos and undesirables.
    Not that there was much need for that. A lot of Seth’s table talk revolved around Rig - who he was talking to, what they had to say about whatever people were twittering over that week, what fascinating new app he’d heard about.
    The trouble with living life in a play-by-play mode is that other people eventually tune out in a kind of self-defence. These days, Julia and Kathy only half-listened to Seth’s news of the world. Much of what he had to say got lost in the slip-stream of words that spilled round the kitchen table. The first time he mentioned a new Rig friend called JJ, Kathy registered the name and checked him out on Seth’s pages. He seemed a regular geeky teenager analysing the lyrics of Pearl Jam and Mudhoney, full of a mixture of pomp and angst. Nothing to worry about there.
    And so JJ became part of the background noise, just another set of references they could let wash over them. Naturally, then, when Seth casually mentioned that he was meeting up with JJ so they could go on a rare sounds quest in Bradfield’s second-hand CD stores, no alarm bells rang.
    When you’re used to candour, it never occurs to you that what you’re hearing is something less than the truth.
     
     
    Tony googled the Worcester estate agent’s website then clicked on the ‘New Properties’ button. The woman he’d dealt with at the agency had sounded like one of his bipolar patients in an unmedicated manic phase. She’d assured him two days ago that the photographs would be taken that very afternoon and the details placed on the website ‘within hours’. It had taken him till now to work up the nerve to look at the information about the house he was selling without ever having seen.
    Given the price the agent had suggested, he knew it must be a substantial property, but he wasn’t prepared for the ample Edwardian villa that confronted him. It was a double-fronted house in mellow red brick with the deep bay windows and imposing doorway picked out in contrasting pale yellow. Heavy swags of curtains were visible at the margins of the windows, and the garden looked opulently landscaped. ‘Unique opportunity to purchase fine family home overlooking Gheluvelt Park,’ the strapline across the top shouted. ‘Four beds, three recep, three bath. Fully fitted workshop with power.’ Tony’s eyebrows rose and his mouth puckered. It was a hell of a lot of house for a man living alone. Perhaps he liked to entertain. Or maybe he just liked to demonstrate to the world how well he’d done. Edmund Arthur Blythe obviously hadn’t been short of a bob or two.
    It occurred to Tony that this sale would mean the same for him. He already had £50,000 from the legacy sitting in his bank account, but that was a fraction of what the house would bring. He’d never imagined having this sort of cash at his disposal, so he’d never speculated about what he would do