‘No, I want to hear it. You were his lodger…’

He sensed her discomfort but could no more let it drop than when asking a horse like Beck to explore new pasture, aware his every urge was to bolt back to the stable.

She picked at a cushion, looked up at him with the big hare eyes then away at the fire. ‘He let me have a room in his house – his wife had left, taking the kids. It was so sad, their toys everywhere. I’d come back to the stud or stay with friends at the weekends when he had them to stay. He cooked amazing meals and told me all about architecture and history. He nicknamed me his pet tramp.’

Luca winced. Grooming you, Pax. He was grooming you. ‘Go on.’

‘I thought he was the kindest person I’d ever met. It was down to him that the firm spotted my potential and offered to sponsor me through college so I could get qualified. I loved the restorations they did. At home with Mack, I just read and read. He had hundreds of books about architecture, I was like Belle in Beauty and the Beast.’

‘And Mack was the beast?’ he asked carefully, realising that Pax had unwittingly gifted herself to a Svengali.

‘Not to me, not at first. I mean yes, he had a pretty fierce reputation at work, and his wife was slinging all sorts of allegations about unreasonable behaviour and bullying, but he was sweet to me. He hardly drank and never at home, he ate healthily, worked out and soon I was doing all that too. He changed my life completely.’

‘By controlling it completely for years.’

‘Not back then.’ She looked angry, needing to believe it.

Luca checked himself. ‘When did you become a couple?’

‘Not for almost a year. I was trying to get him Internet dating, can you imagine? I wrote his profile for him on Match dot com – Good-looking, sporty Scot late thirties, into travel, architecture and fine dining WLTM slim, independent female twenty-five to thirty-five. I had no idea he felt that way about me.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Nineteen.’

He tried not to wince. ‘So how did you get together?’

‘One weekend when he had his kids there, I went to a party with some friends and saw my ex there. I ended up going back to the squat with him. I texted Mack to let him know I was staying on there a few more nights – it was one of my college weeks, and the squat was only a tube stop away from my class. He went berserk, turning up on campus, then trying to get me fired at work, accusing me of taking drugs. When I went back to have it out with him and remind him that my life was my own, he told me he was in love with me. Just straight up. “I love you.” You can guess the rest. Blah-di-blah-di-blah.’ The cushion edge was being shredded now.