I’d seen it all before, starting with the choice of ‘Mary or Margaret’, which immediately doubled her chances of making a score. Put a hundred people in a room and the odds were huge that one of them would know a Mary or a Margaret who had died, and if those names didn’t work, she could move on to Mabel, Miranda and Miriam.

‘She has wet hair,’ Elizabeth added.

I had to admit, I wasn’t expecting that.

There was a short silence. Elizabeth was still gazing in the direction of Tom Cruise. Then someone shouted: ‘That’s Mary Carrington!’

‘Lady in the fourth row. Fifties. Glasses,’ Sid muttered. He hadn’t spoken for a while.

Elizabeth’s head swung round. ‘Who was Mary Carrington?’ she asked.

The same person replied. ‘She lived in town. Everyone knew Mary. She used to have a sweet shop. She slipped getting into the bath. She hit her head and drowned.’

‘She is with her husband . . . Eric.’

‘It wasn’t Eric! It was Ernest!’ a man called out from the back.

‘She wanted to be with him and now they’re happy together, even though they miss you. They miss the island.’

‘She always said she hated it here,’ the man remarked.

‘She said it but she didn’t mean it. Now . . .’ Elizabeth took a deep breath as if she had heard someone creeping up on her from behind. ‘There is another presence here. A young man. He left us far too soon. His name is . . .’ She hesitated, unsure. ‘William?’

I knew it was all trickery. I have an interest in magic and have read biographies of Harry Houdini, who spent half his life exposing fake mediums. I used to watch the Canadian magician James Randi on television and he explained exactly how it worked. If nobody in the audience knew a William who had drowned or been run over or whatever, Elizabeth would make something up and move on. The audience wanted to believe her and that was the weapon she was using against them. How had she known about Mary Carrington? It would have been easy for her to find out. Maybe she had come across the story in a back edition of the Alderney Journal. I was sure it would have been reported.

She was waiting for someone to respond to the arrival of William and I was expecting her to move on to Walter or Wayne when she added, in a surprised voice, ‘Is Anne here?’