Our drinks arrived, and she took a long gulp. ‘In a club, I think. He picked me up – I was only seventeen, you know, and I wanted an adventure. We got married almost straight away, and then he brought me here.’

I looked at my cocktail. So she’d only been a little older than I’d been when I’d first arrived. Carberry must have held the same appeal for her that Freddie and Sylvie had for me. The thought made me tired somehow, and I wished I could just lie down in the Muthaiga bar and go to sleep, forget everything that had happened.

‘Do you ever wonder how different your life would have been if you hadn’t married him?’ I asked her.

‘Never,’ she said. ‘You make your bed, don’t you? It could have been worse. I could have ended up like Sylvie, for instance.’

‘What do you mean?’

She leaned her elbows on the table. ‘I mean, why is she pretending to have lost her marbles?’

‘Is she?’

‘Everyone else can see it even if you can’t.’ She took another gulp. ‘Maybe she’s not guilty, but she’s doing a damn good impression of someone who is. Mood swings, jumpy, won’t look anyone in the eye. Keeps quoting scripture.’ She giggled.

I tapped my fingers on the glass before me. ‘You think it wasn’t an accident?’

‘I think something happened that night.’

My pulse quickened. ‘Why? Did Freddie say something?’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Did he say he was meeting someone later?’

‘No, nothing. It’s just intuition.’ She ducked her head and looked up at me with heavily kohled eyes. ‘But what do I know?’

She couldn’t have been more obviously flirting with me if she tried. My name must not have come up that night then, I thought, and felt a surge of relief.

‘Another drink?’ I said, mostly to steady my nerves.

‘Alright,’ she said, too quickly.

I signalled for fresh cocktails. June wriggled in her seat, looking pleased with herself. On the other hand, maybe she was toying with me. Maybe she was just attracted to violent men. My pulse, which had been starting to return to normal, sped up again.

‘Better late than never,’ she said suddenly.

‘Pardon?’

‘Us drinking together.’

‘Oh. Yes.’

The waiter appeared with the brandies and we held up our glasses in a toast.

‘To Freddie,’ June said.

My skin crawled. She was grinning, and for a moment I felt like getting up and running out, but instead I fixed my face into a smile. ‘To Freddie,’ I said.