I shrugged. “Evening courses were next to free when I did them. Night school. All those people coming in after work to do A-Levels or bookkeeping or what they used to call computer programming. Doing Access courses so they could go to uni, which they could also do part-time, which was also free. But I was used to working—at school I had to keep up with Peter.”

“Funny, you liking him so much. I didn’t get the feeling he liked you a huge amount.”

“What do you mean?” A cold tingling in my flesh, almost like pins and needles. I could accept we had grown apart, even that I had alienated Peter. That we mistrusted, as well as loved, one another. But the thought of Peter not liking me was hard to bear. “Give me examples.”

Rob shrugged. “Just a feeling.”

For someone unwilling to talk about David, Rob didn’t need a huge amount of prompting. He was bitchy and unguarded. David the manipulator, David the professional mirror, so plausible, such a void.

“I know I say I’m bored, but I wasn’t then, not when we were at school. I truly wasn’t. Lessons were dull, but there were all those rules to be broken, and there was getting caught and getting away with it. Fun. And then the grown-up world looming on the horizon. Everything we weren’t allowed, soon to be ours. It was an optimistic feeling. Soon we would be given the keys to the city. Only when you get there? What’s inside? Girls, and he was good with them as well, of course. Nothing was ever enough for David. It all came too easy. Maybe that’s what attracted him to Alice. She wasn’t nice to anyone. I mean I love my sister. I really do. I didn’t want to see her hurt. But what do they say? High maintenance. Touchy. Having people treat her like she was thick because of the dyslexia, watching our father trample all over our mother her whole life. I think perhaps David liked that. I’ve no idea what she saw in him. Maybe she liked having rescued him.”

“What happened afterward, after that weekend?”

“After the police had finished with us? We went back to London. Hunkered down. Got on with it. I mean, we hadn’t known her well. Well, I suppose David had a bit. But I didn’t see that much of Alice and David. I hoped she’d straight-out chuck him, but they limped on for a bit. I think there was some trouble about the job at Christie’s. Left under a cloud, shall we say. I’m not sure of the details. I expect he was up to something shady. Alice chucked him, or he chucked Alice a few months later. It did occur to me that he might be with you.”

“No.”