‘I guess I take it for granted,’ Emer said. The truth was, Robert rarely told her anything about his charity work. She’d known more about it when she was younger, before Robert and her mother got married. Back then, Ursula had been working as Robert’s PA. Emer remembered the steady stream of young women, in and out of the office on work placements. Ursula had done her best to ignore what she called ‘Robert’s girls’, never bothering to hide her disapproval of their presence in her sacred office space. After the wedding, Ursula stopped working, and Emer had barely thought about those young women since.

‘I was sorry to hear about your dad,’ she said, keen to change the subject.

‘Thanks,’ Maeve said. ‘It was a relief in the end, to be honest. He’d been sick for a long time. Not just from the cancer, which is what actually got him in the end. But depressed, too. He got really bad in later years, especially after Mum died. They never recovered from what happened, you know.’

‘Of course they didn’t,’ Emer said. ‘How could anyone recover from something like that?’

‘It’s the not knowing,’ Maeve said. ‘It’s a form of torture. You don’t know how much I’d give to find out what happened to her. And if I ever did find out, I’d make damn sure whoever took her pays for what they did to my family.’

She nodded at Emer’s glass. ‘Your drink’s nearly finished. Let me get you a top-up.’

‘You got the last one,’ Emer said. ‘This is my round. What are you having?’

‘Well just one more then,’ Maeve said. ‘I don’t normally drink during the week, but it’s worth celebrating being back in touch, don’t you think?’

One drink turned into several, as the two women caught up on all the news they’d missed out on over the years. Sharing gossip about people they’d once known, reminiscing about the things they’d got up to before their worlds fell apart and they lost touch with each other.

At some point, Maeve asked about Kitty and Emer found herself telling Maeve everything that had happened in London. It might have been the drink, but Maeve seemed to take the sighting seriously, especially when Emer told her about Kitty coming into her hotel bedroom the night she was supposed to have drowned.

‘What did your mother say at the time?’ Maeve asked.

‘She didn’t believe me,’ Emer said. ‘No one did. They all said I’d imagined it. And that’s what Robert and Ursula think now as well. They think I’ve lost the plot.’

‘What will you do?’ Maeve asked.