‘Not the real minutiae; I’m not a shareholder, I never look at the books, I just know the gist. You know that’s how they split things, when Mum died, to avoid inheritance tax later? We got the house, me and Gareth, with Dad living here as long as he wants to, and Josh got the business. He and Dad are the only shareholders. Dad still has thirty per cent, which’ll be shared between the grandchildren eventually, or would have been, so they had meetings here, over dinner. It’s a family business, there’s no secrecy about it.’

‘When did the problems start?’

‘Some time ago – three or four years? More? It’s not new, they’d been bumping along for a while. There are always ebbs and flows, anyway – when we were kids Dad had two or three hairy periods, the recessions at the start of the Eighties and the Nineties. This was different, though – business moving overseas, globalization. Then Novamat went to the wall, which was a real blow.’

‘Was that about two years ago? Samir mentioned a big customer.’

‘Yes, that’s them. There were cash-flow issues, too – people weren’t paying on time. Couldn’t, themselves. Anyway, you know my brother, he pulled out all the stops. First he cut his own salary in half, then for a few months he didn’t take one at all and they lived on Rin’s income and a few bits and pieces of savings. Gareth and I took a loan against the house to help but then they got a big order from Poland and he paid it back. We tried to stop him but he insisted. He was expecting another order, he said, the same again, but in the end, it didn’t happen. The customer got a cheaper quote from China.’

‘When was that, your loan?’

‘Three years ago – about that.’

‘And then what?’

‘He started laying people off. Which he found really hard.’ She paused. ‘He got depressed – anxious. Both.’

‘Did he see anyone about it?’

‘His GP. She gave him antidepressants – an SSRI.’

‘Did they help?’

‘Seemed to. He coped better.’

‘And the police know about that?’

‘Of course. We’ve told them everything. But they’re interpreting it as proof, evidence of instability, rather than him dealing with it. They talk like it was way more than it was, a major depressive episode. It wasn’t – I would have known.’

But she hadn’t known at all, Robin thought. Corinna hadn’t told her.