‘In any event,’ she continued briskly, ‘he was obviously a bit of a hothead when he was younger, and just the kind of person who might do something stupid.’

‘Something stupid?’ Ian repeated. ‘You call murder “something stupid”?’

Geraldine was taken aback by the bitterness in his voice. Her glance brushed past his face; she caught only a fleeting glimpse of the desolate expression in his eyes. On the instant, her years of training seemed to slide away and she lost her grip on her professional detachment.

‘Ian,’ she blurted out before she could stop herself, ‘you look exhausted. Do you need to take some time off?’

He scowled at her. ‘Don’t you dare suggest anything of the kind to anyone outside this room.’

Geraldine hastened to reassure him that she had no intention of sharing her opinion with anyone else.

‘I can do without busybodies fussing around,’ he added sourly. ‘Look, Geraldine, I’m not going to pretend that I’m not in trouble –’ he shook his head rapidly, like a wet dog. ‘But it’s my problem, and I’ll work this out somehow.’

‘It’s not only your problem,’ she replied, struggling to control her temper. ‘This isn’t just about you. It’s about your wife, and the baby who may or may not be yours, and it’s about me. What happens in your life affects me too, you know.’

Ian held up his hand. ‘Enough, enough. Please, don’t make this harder for me than it already is. I’m sorry, I know I’m being selfish, but I can’t see any way out of this mess right now. I’ll get there, I promise, but I need some time to work this out. I’m just asking you to be patient.’

‘You know I’ll wait,’ she replied, slightly mollified. She hesitated before asking whether he had yet had a paternity test. ‘It might help you to work out what you want to do. It must make a difference, to the real father as well as to you.’

As she spoke, Geraldine realised she was still clinging to the hope that Ian wasn’t the baby’s father after all. Until he took the test, there was no way he could be sure one way or the other. She wondered whether he was reluctant to find out the truth because deep down he really wanted the baby to be his, or because that prospect terrified him.

‘Either way, you don’t have to take her back,’ she added miserably.

But Ian no longer appeared to be listening to her. With a sigh, she returned to her desk.

‘I don’t understand where the baby’s being kept,’ Ariadne said.

Still thinking about Ian and Bev’s baby, Geraldine was startled.

‘What do you mean, where he’s being kept? What do you know about it?’