‘I think,’ he went on, ‘it was destiny that brought us together. I was put on this earth to heal, Ally. It’s still a work-in-progress, but we’ll get there.’

My inward squirm was now almost physically painful.

‘I was much more fortunate with my parents,’ Walt volunteered. ‘They supported me in all of my ambitions. I wouldn’t have set up Walter Rainbird Computing Solutions without their backing. My parents helped me achieve everything that I have achieved.’

An unworthy cynical voice inside me asked how much of an achievement becoming a computer repairman was. I’m normally more generous than that. Walt brought out the worst in me. And I didn’t mind at all. I had discovered he was someone I was fully prepared to loathe.

‘Sadly,’ he went on, ‘both my parents have passed.’

Another one using the expression I hate. I mumbled some appropriate condolence.

He continued pontificating, ‘But, even though her mother was such a cow to her, this is still a difficult time for Ally.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. Though I didn’t see much evidence of it. Alexandra’s predominant reaction to Ingrid’s death seemed to have been relief.

‘Fortunate that she’s got me to keep an eye on her,’ said Walt, as he too drifted through to the kitchen. Leaving me with the thought that it was a long time since anyone had managed to get up my nose so quickly. Normally, I’m more charitable with people, waiting, giving them a chance to display their approachable side. With Walt, though, I was prepared to make an exception.

I looked at the faded file. One corner was folded down. When I bent it back, a title was revealed in once blue, now brown felt pen. ‘Alexandra.’

The contents were pitifully meagre. A birth certificate with a blank where the father’s name could be. A sheet of four machine-taken passport photographs of a spotty early teenage Alexandra, from which one had been scissored off. A tasteless birthday card of cake and balloons bearing the legend ‘To the Best Mum in the World’, inscribed inside with childish letters reading, ‘LOVE ALEXANDRA’. A couple of school reports.

And that was it. Nothing there to cause Niall Connor any anxiety.

I looked up from the desk to see Alexandra approaching from the kitchen, gulping from a large glass of white wine.

‘You see?’ she said, her eyes sparkling needily. ‘So, Ingrid did really care about me, didn’t she?’

I put on music in the car on the way back to Chichester. Billie Holiday. One of Oliver’s favourites. I used to joke with him, however bad you’re feeling, listen to some Billie Holiday and you’ll realize that there’s someone worse off than you. Slit-your-wrists music, he called it. Which, as things turned out, was ironic, really.

The music didn’t distract me as much as I’d hoped, though. Take more than Billie Holiday to stop me thinking. So, trying to keep my thoughts away from Ben, I focused on Alexandra and Walt.

I was glad for her sake that she had at least got someone. I could not pretend the someone she’d got was to my liking. Horses for courses, though. I knew lots of remarkably successful relationships between people, neither of whom scored high on the accepted attractiveness scale. But in this case, Walt’s manner rang warning bells. I hoped that Alexandra, who perhaps hadn’t a lot of experience of relationships, knew what she was getting herself into. Being the object of affection for someone like Walt could come at a cost. He was definitely controlling.