‘While the weather’s like this, we don’t have to do anything.’ Jane could see he found the ‘we’ reassuring. Despite all his experience, the green activism, the doctorate, he seemed out of his depth. ‘We can make a decision when it clears. Perhaps by then the investigation will be over.’

Ben kicked a piece of shingle off the road. ‘Who do you think did it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She treated me like shit,’ he said. ‘But I would have died for her.’

In the centre, Jane dropped off her coat in her room and closed the curtains. The wind had dropped a little, or perhaps she’d become accustomed to it. The light had gone. In the kitchen she lit the Calor gas under the vegetables she’d prepared earlier and put plates to warm. The table was already laid. Just for the six of them: four visitors, Ben and her. With the main lights on she couldn’t see outside – just her reflection in the big windows, looking pale and thin. She was a dried-out middle-aged woman. I need a lover, she thought. Someone warm and big-breasted with a deep laugh to breathe some life into me. The potatoes had come to the boil and she turned down the heat. She’d mash them to serve with the gammon she was roasting. Ben was the only veggie left in the place since the last plane went out and there was a quiche left over from the party that he could have. She knew there was a packet of broad beans still in the freezer and she’d serve them with a white sauce. Shame the last gale had killed the parsley in the little field centre garden. But all the time she was deciding the trivial domestic details that so calmed her, she was thinking about Angela’s murder. An act of anger, she thought. Or revenge.

She walked down the corridor that linked the kitchen to Maurice’s flat. Her leather shoes slapped on the tiles and echoed so they sounded like following footsteps. She knocked at the door and when there was no reply she went in. Maurice was sitting hollow-eyed, alone in the dark. She switched on a table lamp, and took a seat beside him.

‘Where’s Poppy?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said. She saw he couldn’t care about anything. He was entirely wrapped around in his own grief. ‘She might be in her room.’

When Jane stood up to look he called after her. ‘They’ve taken Angela away.’

‘I know.’

Poppy was lying on her bed watching television, an Australian soap. On the screen, two impossibly beautiful teenagers were lying on a sandy beach staring at each other. For a moment Jane thought it was crass and insensitive for the girl to be engrossed in a sentimental love story while her father was so miserable. But the girl’s presence wouldn’t make things easier for him and she’d never pretended to be fond of Angela. The birdwatchers had been chasing all over the island after some rare bird and that was just as inappropriate. As inappropriate as Jane taking a secret delight in her attempts to unravel the mystery of Angela’s death.