‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder,’ Sally said neatly, popping another of my grapes into her generous mouth, before offering me the bunch rather belatedly.

I shook my head. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘We did a show on it, don’t you remember? Narcissists – men who love themselves too much. That very good-looking surfer type was on it. We paid him five hundred pounds to appear – I remember because Charlie went mad. He had anger management issues too, I seem to recall.’ She ate another grape. ‘The surfer, not Charlie.’

‘He wasn’t a surfer, though, was he?’ I said mournfully. ‘He was a window-cleaner from Dagenham. Called Keith.’

‘No, that’s true. But he looked like a surfer. And he had delusions of grandeur too.’

I thought of Seb’s driver, the Armani, the restaurant and the expensive hotel. I’d never questioned any of it; it went hand in hand with what I believed he was. But I realised now I’d never even seen where he lived. I thought I had recognised him from a TV drama; it was only now I realised it was from the hospital, after the crash. He’d come to see Fay – the young bloke in the beanie, dropping his phone at my feet.

I thought miserably of all the shows I’d produced brimful of cod-psychology and people who weren’t entirely what they seemed. Of how someone like Seb, already hovering on the edge, might easily have been pushed over by a power-hungry presenter like Renee Owens.

‘Seb needed help,’ I said quietly. ‘Not to get involved with a pisshead on the rebound. He had a terrible relationship with his mother, apparently. I think she – there was some kind of abuse, Fay said. It all stemmed from there, I guess.’ I contemplated the shrivelled grape-stalks Sally had left. I thought about that final phone call, telling him not to come down to Pendarlin. ‘Perhaps – perhaps if I hadn’t rejected him, it would have been okay.’ Then I thought about the texts, the flowers, the smashed-up flat, the way he’d tried to convince me that I was mad. I looked at Sally. ‘It wouldn’t, though, would it?’

‘No, Maggie.’ She shook her head sorrowfully and chucked the remains of the grapes in the bin. ‘I don’t think it would.’

The day I had my stitches removed, I returned to Pendarlin with my father. He hurried inside the cottage to fetch some things I needed, and I averted my gaze from the scarred tree Seb’s car had hit. Then I gritted my teeth and walked to the end of the orchard to see Digby’s grave. Alex had planted a small pink azalea on the mound, which amazed me. He’d scratched out an epitaph on an old piece of slate and stuck it in the ground behind the just-flowering shrub.