The coroner must have heard people talking. He tilted his face up at us, pushed his glasses back up his nose and raised his eyebrows expectantly. I looked round the gallery – everyone else seemed bored, or asleep, but I could feel him building up to something. I slipped my hands into my trouser pockets so Boy wouldn’t see them glistening with sweat. Then the coroner shrugged, looked away, and the moment was gone. He squeaked on for a few more minutes about the presence of alcohol in the deceased’s system, the fact of his late wife’s recent demise, and the unfortunate circumstance of the gas oven having been left on. My head swam in the heat. Finally he called out the verdict – accidental death. The investigation was closed.

I made my excuses and escaped to the corridor. The red-haired policeman who’d accompanied Phillips to my interview was standing outside the bathroom, scuffing his shoe.

‘Verdict?’ he asked.

‘Accidental death.’ I tried to smile; it was a little better than my earlier attempt.

‘Must feel like a let-off.’

‘What?’

He scratched his chin, grinning. ‘Only joking. Besides – you had an alibi, didn’t you?’

‘My sister.’

His grin widened; it made him look even younger. ‘Bit disappointing for us, of course. We always like to have a suspect on hand.’

I wondered how I was still upright. ‘Sorry I couldn’t oblige.’

‘Never mind.’ He stood aside to let me pass. ‘Did you want to go in here?’

I made it to the toilet just in time before I was sick everywhere.

I drove back to Kiboko a few days later. Maud was having tea on the veranda when I arrived. She’d hung baskets of bougainvillea and honeysuckle up on the outside of the house, and the smell of it trailed through the air in wisps. I dropped a kiss on her forehead and sat down next to her.

‘The coroner ruled it an accident,’ I said. ‘So you definitely won’t have to testify in court.’

‘Good,’ she said. Her skin was clear and almost golden, but there were dark circles under her eyes, and her mouth seemed slacker than before. I’d hoped to reassure her, but she still seemed weighed down, and it occurred to me that maybe she’d suspected me all along, and that was why she’d lied to the police. But I’d been afraid that Sylvie knew, and June, and even the coroner, and nothing had come of any of my fears; I was being paranoid, I told myself.

Still, I couldn’t bear the thought that she might know what I was capable of, and cast around for a question to change the subject, in case she asked me more about that night, and in case I couldn’t hide the truth from her any longer. ‘How’s the gardening going?’

‘I haven’t done much recently.’

‘Why not?’