‘That was a great performance, love,’ he said to Elizabeth. ‘But you can take off those stupid glasses. We know you can see.’

‘What?’ I couldn’t believe what he had just said. ‘She’s faking being blind?’ It was one of the most disgusting things I’d ever heard.

‘I told you she was a fraud,’ Hawthorne said. ‘She did it very well on stage. A complete pro. But outside that, she made so many bloody mistakes.’ He peeled off the cling film and slid the glass of wine across the table. ‘Why don’t you drink this, love? You look like you need it.’

‘You bastard!’ Sid exclaimed.

‘Now, now!’ Hawthorne warned him. ‘If you’re going to get nasty, the whole world’s going to know about this. I’m not sure what your fans will think when they find out you’ve been ripping them off, but I’ve got a feeling it’s not exactly going to catapult you into the best-seller lists. At the moment, there’s just the four of us who know that your wife is a cold-hearted, manipulative bitch. Maybe it would be a good idea to keep it that way. What do you think?’

There was a silence even more dramatic than the one that had opened the séance.

Elizabeth Lovell was the first to recover. ‘Let me explain something to you,’ she said. She picked up the wine and downed it in one. When she continued, she sounded desperate – and genuine, for perhaps the first time. ‘It wasn’t a lie,’ she insisted. ‘Not completely. Everything I have written about in my books is true, I swear to you, and I’ve been an inspiration to many, many people. I do have diabetes, and in my twenties this resulted in serious damage to my eyesight – proliferative retinopathy. I can show you the certificates. For a while I suffered almost total vision loss. This happened at the same time that I realised I had the abilities which I discussed in my talk—’

‘So how come the miracle recovery?’ Hawthorne interrupted.

‘I had eye surgery to remove scar tissue from the back of my retina and although it was still damaged, some of my sight returned.’

‘Enough to see Derek Abbott and Charles le Mesurier walk to the Snuggery together just before ten o’clock on Saturday night?’

She nodded.

‘But why all this pretence?’ I demanded. I knew Hawthorne didn’t like it when I interrupted, but I couldn’t stop myself.

‘It was Sid’s idea,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The whole thing with Blind Sight.’

‘That’s not true!’ Sid snarled. ‘Don’t you bloody say that.’

‘You suggested it.’