She gave a wry smile. “He usually was worried about Barnaby and me. It took him a long time, but finally he decided to take the job, although I made it clear that I was not prepared to move to Bristol. I was very pleased. It gave me the chance to be independent of him, without seeming ungrateful. He knew that we had settled here. It gave him the chance to be independent of me too.

“Then, a few days before he died, suddenly he seemed to change his mind. He said that I wouldn’t be able to look after Barnaby on my own. He asked me to marry him, to go to Bristol with him. When I refused he got really angry, crazy angry. I think that he’d been drinking. He said that he would get Barnaby taken into care, that he would say he was the father, and apply for custody himself. At first I was frightened. I’d never seen him like that before. He said a lot of cruel things, personal things. Then I lost my temper and told him that I never wanted to see him again. I never did.”

“Did you tell the police about your argument?”

“I didn’t need to. The walls of the cottage are very thin and they interviewed the neighbours before they came to see me.”

“And nothing he said gave you any indication of what had changed his mind?”

She shook her head.

“I got the impression that it had been a very sudden change of heart through, that it wasn’t something that he’d thought out clearly. The evening of the row he was late getting here. He’d been having a meal with Ella and Jack, but Ella would have been the last person to try to persuade him not to take the job. She’d understand what it meant to him.”

“Did you hear from Tom again?”

“Yes, he phoned the night before he died.”

“You spoke to him? Even though you had been so angry just a couple of days before?”

“Yes. You must understand that I had no right to be angry with him. I owed him so much. When he phoned it was as if I’d never lost my temper. There was the same concern, the same worry about me. He phoned to say that he wouldn’t be coming to see me that night. He was going birdwatching early the next morning.”

“So you knew that he would be out on the marsh early on the day he died?”

“Yes, I knew.” She understood perfectly the implication of his question.

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“No, I didn’t see anyone else.”

“Where were you on the Saturday morning that Tom died?”

“I was here. The police don’t believe me. Someone phoned from the hotel to find out why Tom wasn’t at work, and there was no reply. I heard the phone but I was bathing Barnaby. I couldn’t leave him on his own in the bath, and by the time I took him out and reached the phone it had stopped ringing. I told the police but I could tell that they didn’t believe me.”