But when the uniforms had broken down the door and the four of us had gone tramping all over Jenny’s precious house, the alarm had been off. The obvious explanation was that, if anyone had come in from outside, the Spains had opened the door themselves; that Jenny, scared as she was, hadn’t been scared of this person. “Did she change the locks?”

“I asked that, too—was she going to. She went back and forth, but in the end she said no, probably not, it’d be a couple of hundred quid and the budget couldn’t stretch to that. The alarm would be enough. She said, ‘I don’t even mind that much if he tries to get in again. I’d almost rather he did. At least then we’d know.’ I told you: she’s not a wimp.”

“Where had Pat been that day? Was this before he lost his job?”

“No, after. He’d gone down to Athlone, for a job interview—this was back when him and Jenny still had the two cars.”

“What did he think about the possible breakin?”

“I don’t know. She never said. I thought … to be honest, I thought she hadn’t told him. She was keeping her voice right down, on the phone—that could’ve been just because the kids were asleep, but in a house that size? And she kept saying ‘I’—‘I’m changing the alarm code, I couldn’t fit that in the budget, I’ll sort the guy if I get him.’ Not ‘we.’”

And there it was again: the little thing out of place, the gift I had told Richie to keep his eyes peeled for. “Why wouldn’t she tell Pat? Shouldn’t that be the first thing she did, if she thought they’d had intruders?”

Another shrug. Fiona’s chin was tucked down into her chest. “Because she didn’t want to worry him, I guess. He had enough on his plate. I thought that was probably why she wasn’t planning on changing the locks, too. She couldn’t do it without Pat knowing.”

“You didn’t think that was a little odd—even risky? If someone had broken into his home, didn’t he have the right to know?”

“Maybe, whatever, but I didn’t actually think anyone had been in there. I mean, what’s the simplest explanation? Pat took the pen and ate the bloody ham and one of the kids messed with the curtains, or they had a ghost burglar who could walk through walls and fancied a sandwich?”

Her voice was tightening up, getting defensive. I asked, “Did you say that to Jenny?”

“Yeah, more or less. It just made her worse. She went off on this whole thing about how the pen was from the hotel where they’d stayed on honeymoon and it was special and Pat knew not to move it, and she knew exactly how much ham had been in the packet—”

“Is she the type of person who would know that kind of thing?”

After a moment Fiona said, like it hurt, “Sort of, yeah. I guess. Jenny … she likes doing stuff right. So when she quit work, she got really serious about being a stay-at-home mum, you know? The place was spotless, she fed the kids on organic stuff that she made from scratch, she was doing these exercise DVDs every day so she’d get her figure back … Exactly what she had in her fridge—yeah, she might know.”