“I don’t know her at all, but I recognise her,” Jeanette replied, pulling out a bottle of cheap, sweet wine from the backpack on the ground in front of her.

“Why did it end between you?” asked Micki, who had missed the whole introduction a few days earlier.

“Because it went to hell, Micki,” Lubbi said helpfully. “Like relationships often do.”

And that was as true as could be, but Jeanette was ready to give them some more.

“He disappeared,” she said, twisting the cap and taking a swig from the bottle. “One day he was suddenly gone.”

The others didn’t appear to know whether to interpret the information literally or whether she was paraphrasing the sad end to a relationship, but Kat—one of the more boisterous people in the group—squeezed herself onto the bench between Micki and Lubbi and began asking questions.

“Poof!” she said, snapping her fingers. “Magic!”

“You’re joking, Kat,” said Jeanette, who wasn’t in the mood to bandy words about. “But he really disappeared. It was in the papers with big headlines. His family appealed for help.”

“But you didn’t, because you knew where he was,” Kat laughed.

Kat didn’t know how right she was, but Jeanette wasn’t willing to go that far with her story.

“You finished the bloke off and dumped him in the sea,” Kat said. “And I’m sure he deserved it!”

“Stop it, girl,” Lubbi warned. “Let Jen tell those of us who are interested what happened next.”

Jeanette passed her the bottle. Kat wasn’t hard to please.

“There is no what happened next,” Jeanette observed. “There’s still no trace of him.”

She lit a cigarette and took a long first drag on it.

“So the chick who passed by here a while ago,” said Lubbi, “is she still married to the guy even though no one has heard from him in—what did you say? Five years?”

“Four years. And four months.”

“And the kids must be getting big because you did say there were kids in the mix, didn’t you?”

“Yes, two.”

“That he won’t see grow up. Or is choosing not to. What do the police think? Is he alive or is he dead?”

“They obviously think he’s dead,” said Jeanette, blowing smoke from the corner of her mouth. “He hasn’t left a trace. He went to work as usual one day and disappeared at lunchtime. No one has seen him since then.”

“And what do you think?” Micki asked.

“I don’t think anything,” Jeanette lied. “Life goes on. For me and for her, who just passed by.”

“But you seem to have taken it harder,” croaked Kat, handing back the bottle. “What with you sitting here on the bench with a bottle of fucking Rosita!”

Then she laughed hoarsely, making her stomach bob and shaking the whole bench. But Jeanette wasn’t prepared to let this moment of togetherness slip through her fingers. That loudmouth wasn’t going to ruin a day that had begun so well.

“She has the children to live for,” she said seriously. “I have nothing.”