What was clear was that Bronte was the original Outsider. Her own tribe looked down on her while the local people kept their distance. Even within her family of origin she was alone: her father had anger-management problems, both her parents drank a lot and the sibling closest to her in age was nine years older.

But she already knew this. It had been established during her first spell in a treatment centre. I wasn’t uncovering anything useful here.

Aged fifteen, at a weekend party with her better-off cousins, she’d had her first brush with drugs. ‘Just hash,’ she said. ‘It was so much fun.’

‘ “Just” hash?’ I asked.

‘Compared to heroin, it’s “just”,’ she replied without a flicker.

She was hard to jangle, I’d give her that.

It wasn’t until she was twenty-two, in London, that she first took heroin.

‘What were you up to in London?’

‘House-sitting my great-aunt’s mews and working in an art gallery.’

‘How d’you get the art-gallery gig?’ Chalkie asked.

‘My godmother was best friends with the owner’s sister.’

‘You poshos really look after each other.’

‘And how was your first time with heroin?’ I asked.

‘It was indescribable.’ She looked dreamy. ‘It was complete elation combined with the hugest, best feeling of love and safety.’

‘Yeh, it’s nice, all right,’ Chalkie murmured.

Bronte’s next life event was meeting Eden—also Anglo-Irish but, unlike Bronte, rich and titled.

‘He said I had to stop taking drugs, so I stopped. We got married, set up home in Riddlesden Hall, I had my babies, I was working with my beloved horses. Everything was perfect.’

‘Yet you suddenly ramped up your drug-taking six years ago? Why was that?’

‘Oh. I really can’t remember. I’m not really sure…I couldn’t say.’

I got a horrible feeling that Bronte was just going through the motions here. She’d been through rehab once before, she knew the right noises to make.

Looking for another route in, I said, ‘Tell us about your children. You had the first, Freya, when you were twenty-five?’

‘Hugo at twenty-seven and Gerald at thirty. Then Eden said there were to be no more, now that he had two sons, an heir and a spare.’ She gave a little laugh, which died a death in the room. The rest of them, even Giles, were a long way from an heir-and-a-spare lifestyle.

Suddenly very curious, I asked, ‘What kind of relationship do you have with your children?’

‘I utterly adore them.’ She went to say more, then stopped abruptly.

‘ “But”?’ I asked.

‘They’re at boarding school in England. Well, not Freya, she’s on her gap year. I don’t see them as often as I’d like. Perhaps…five weeks a year. Six? They go to French camp during the summer holidays.’

Jesus. ‘What age did they start boarding?’