‘OK. I see. OK.’

Tara deliberately switched her gaze to the basket, where Sybil was now sitting upright as a statue against the grille. Was Sybil ratting her out about the worming pills she’d slipped into her food?

David laughed under his breath, to himself.

‘Is she telling you what’s wrong with her?’ she asked semi-sarcastically. ‘Because if it’s something other than mild digestive upset, I want my forty quid back from the vet.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with her,’ said David, without looking up. ‘She ate something she shouldn’t have in the garden.’

‘Good guess. Can you be more specific?’

‘Well, she’s not clear about what it was originally. It was a bit … decomposed once she bit into it. A thrush, maybe.’

‘She can tell the difference?’

David was writing on his notepad with his fountain pen; it scratched against the paper. He paused, added another couple of lines, then ripped off the page and folded it in two. As he handed it to her, Tara was reminded of an old-fashioned doctor writing a prescription. Or a magician doing a trick.

‘I don’t want you to read that until you get home,’ he said. ‘Promise?’

‘Promise,’ said Tara, although she wasn’t sure why or what she was promising.

‘Great!’ He flashed a quick smile at the cat basket, then at her. ‘Thank you for letting me meet Sybil – she’s a lovely cat.’

‘Thanks,’ said Tara, watching him stroll out of the room. Somehow David seemed a lot more confident than he had a few hours ago, and far more confident than he had on the fire escape last night.

She looked back at the grille of the cat basket. Sybil had gone to sleep.

At half past five, Tara sat in the car outside her house, and took David’s note out of her bag.

It had been burning a hole since she’d hidden it there, but for reasons she couldn’t quite admit to herself she’d committed to her promise and waited until she got home to read it.

She unfolded the paper, already guessing what David could have gleaned from their chat. He had smooth cursive handwriting, with looped Ds and Fs; Jolyon the long-since-departed graphologist would have had a field day, she thought. The therapists – including Tara; she wasn’t ashamed – had queued up to have Jolyon ‘do’ them (‘These Cs indicate a strong creative side … this long tail suggests you have untapped emotional depths …’ etc.; Jolyon had even found something positive to say about Bryan’s scary all-caps printing), until he had to leave under a cloud after Jacqueline’s signature was forged on the Majestic Wine invoices.

David had written three things on the paper.