“I couldn’t leave it be. It meant too much for us to walk away from it. Hell, you know how much we loved each other. You and Sophie, you were there right from the start. Ruby’s birthday dinner at Green’s. The lights shining on the bay, only all I had eyes for was Penny . . .” Meredith’s voice tailed off and two fat tears spilled down her pale cheeks.

Lindsay leaned forward and put an awkward hand on Meredith’s arm. “I remember. She was the same. I couldn’t get a word of sense out of either of you. If there hadn’t been a table between you, you’d have been arrested for indecency in a public place.”

A sad smile curled the edges of Meredith’s lips. “Yeah. Feels like ancient history now, though.” She rubbed the tears away with an impatient hand. “That said, I still cared about Penny too much to want to let her go. I figured I had a chance if I could only get her to listen to me. So I came on after her. I’d already booked the vacation time, it was just a matter of arranging a base for myself.”

“And when did you get in?”

“Exactly a week ago.”

Lindsay gave the room a quick scrutiny. “You dropped lucky with your digs.”

“Pardon me?” Meredith looked puzzled.

“Sorry. Soon as I get back on British soil, I become more idiomatic than the natives. I was saying, you lucked out with the apartment.”

Meredith looked round her vaguely. “This place? The company has a deal with the management here. This is where we always stay when we’re over on business. It’s easier to be private for meetings and stuff in an apartment like this than in a hotel. I just asked our travel department to book me a place and bill me direct.”

Lindsay leaned back, relieved that her ploy had loosened Meredith up a little. “Going back a bit,” she said casually. “To when you split up. That was about five, six weeks ago, am I right?”

Meredith’s eyes went back to her coffee cup. “I guess,” she said.

“I’m not entirely clear what went wrong.”

Meredith made a choking sound that Lindsay translated as a bitter laugh. “The chapter and verse is clear enough. But why it escalated the way it did, that’s the obscure part.” She stood up abruptly and walked across to the window to stare out at the canopy of trees. “Do you have a cigarette?” she demanded, turning back into the room.

“Meredith, you know I quit years ago,” Lindsay protested.

“I know, I just figured you might have brought some in tax-free for somebody. Friend, family, I don’t know.”

“You quit too. About six months after me. Don’t do it, Meredith. Don’t let the bastard kill you as well as Penny,” Lindsay said passionately.

With an impatient gesture, Meredith freed her hair from the elastic band and let it fall around her face in a limp curtain. “Oh, fuck it!”