‘Can you blame her?’ Robert said quietly. ‘She tries not to, but it isn’t easy. You were the last person to see Kitty alive. Your mother thinks… Well, it doesn’t matter what she thinks. The point is, you need to be a bit more understanding, that’s all. Do you remember when you were a little girl and you used to come into the office with your mother during the summer holidays?’

Emer remembered. Back then, her mother had been working as Robert’s PA. During the summer holidays, there’d been no one at home to look after Kitty and Emer, so Ursula used to take them into work with her. Long, boring days when they’d been forced to sit at a desk with nothing to do for hours on end.

‘We used to have those young women working with us,’ Robert said.

‘The work experience girls,’ Emer said. A steady stream of older teenage girls, working on an apprenticeship scheme set up by Robert back in the eighties and still running today.

‘Those girls,’ Robert said, ‘they’d never worked in an office before. Most of them had never even made it to secondary school. It took a lot of patience to skill them up and get them to a standard where they were employable. But I put the effort in because it was worth it. That’s why the scheme is still running. Because people see how much it helps.’

‘And your point is?’

Robert smiled.

‘My point is that a little bit of patience pays dividends. I know your mother can be difficult, but she means well. And she does love you, in her own way. So come on, what do you say? Hop out of bed, get dressed and let her take you shopping. And maybe stop all this nonsense about seeing Kitty in London. It’s not fair on your mother.’

She wanted to tell him to get stuffed, that it wasn’t nonsense. She knew what she’d seen, and if her mother didn’t like that there was nothing Emer could do about that. But she’d always found it hard to say no to Robert. Something he knew and used to his advantage whenever he wanted her to give in to her mother.

‘Give me fifteen minutes to shower and get dressed,’ she said, ‘and then I’ll be right down.’

‘Good girl.’ He smiled and her spirits lifted, as they always did, when she made him happy.

She was ready in under ten minutes. Which gave her five more before she had to leave the bedroom. Her laptop was open on the desk beneath the window. An old colour photo filled the screen; two girls, their smiles wide and bright and so happy her throat ached.