On her way to the adoption agency on Thursday she had nipped into Boots and hovered around the make-up counter, looking at different coloured eye shadows. She had tried a silvery blue powder on the inside of her wrist, resisted the temptation to buy a scarlet lipstick, settling instead for her usual neutral pinkish one, and lashed out on a new brown eye shadow. She had spent Thursday evening pampering herself, a routine that she normally reserved for the end of a case, plucking her eyebrows and blow drying her hair. It restored her equanimity after her futile attempt to persuade the social worker to put her in contact with her mother. Life went on regardless.Throughout Friday morning she was distracted. ‘It's only a casual drink,’ she told herself fiercely, but it was a while since a man like Paul Hilliard had wanted to meet her alone. After Mark, her partner of six years, had unexpectedly left her for someone else it had taken her a while to trust another boyfriend. Eventually she'd met Craig but he too had left her because, like Mark, he had resented her putting work first.Paul had suggested meeting at lunch time at The Gate, a wine bar in the town that Geraldine had seen as she drove past but had never been inside.
