‘Use your brain, Ern. I thought we’d dug up something valuable. I don’t know, diamonds? Gold bricks? What do you steal and hide in a coffin? Why else would he have this, if not to check something like that? Alan was a second-hand jeweller, wasn’t he? I thought it was pretty obvious what they were talking about. And I took it because, well’—she cleared her throat, embarrassed—‘because Michael wasn’t telling me anything about the coffin, and maybe I wanted to see for myself. Just in case this weekend went a different way than I thought it was going to go. With Lucy.’

‘You felt you couldn’t fully trust him? Once a cheater always a cheater?’ I only needled on this point for my personal validation, knowing full well how petty it was. Katherine’s pills must have loosened me up. I never would have said that sober.

‘Maybe that was part of it,’ she admitted in that low, shameful voice people use when they admit to things. ‘It took him so long to tell Lucy about us, and he knew I couldn’t tell you before he agreed to tell her. I begged him to pay her debts, so we could have a clean break. When he finally sent her papers, I think it was only because he was still so mad at you. That was the first time I thought maybe he just wanted something of yours. This weekend brought it all up again. I felt on show.’

‘So you took this from him, knowing he couldn’t cut you out of whatever was in the coffin if he couldn’t check the value until he got off the mountain.’

‘It sounds a bit paranoid, when you put it like that,’ she said. ‘But then he gave you the keys, not me. And I knew if you didn’t go alone into the truck, Crawford and Sofia would see it too, and then everyone would know. I knew, at least, that you wanted to keep the bag of money secret, so I thought you might keep this secret too, whatever it was. That’s why I insisted you looked alone.’ I heard her suck her teeth. It was something she did when she was worried and couldn’t sleep. I used to stroke her shoulder, to let her know I was there and everything was okay. I was surprised to see my arm make the same movement towards the empty space beside me on the couch. A muscle memory. ‘Obviously I was wrong about what was in the coffin’—she paused expectantly, but I didn’t take the bait—‘so I have a new theory. I think he wanted to check your money.’