Toiana jabbed a finger with a long purple fingernail at him. ‘You know how many docs we talked to back then? I can’t count. No insurance? Sorry, we can’t help you. My boy could turn blue in front of them for all they cared. But not Dr. Janine. She said she’d take care of Al. We had no money, no insurance, and she said, don’t you worry about that. I’m not ashamed to say, I was on my knees crying. Seymour, too. And Dr. Janine was as good as her word. She did the surgery. She saved him. Never asked us for one penny.’

‘I can hardly imagine how grateful you must have felt,’ Stride said.

‘Grateful? That’s not half of it. We owed her everything. Seymour and me, we told her, what can we do? How do we pay you back? She said, you just make sure Al lives a good life. That’s all. But we told her, if there is anything – anything you need – you call us. No matter what.’

There was a long silence at the table.

Finally, Maggie said, ‘And did she call you?’

Toiana grabbed her fork and picked at the lasagne on her plate, but she’d lost her appetite. ‘There were lots of follow-up appointments after the surgery. Dr. Janine talked about that husband of hers. What a beast he was. How trapped she was. Smart people can be the absolute worst when it comes to relationships. Here’s this amazing doc, but in her personal life, she wasn’t any different from the wives and girlfriends who end up at the shelters.’

Or that’s what she wanted you to believe, Stride thought.

‘We knew things were bad,’ Toiana went on, ‘but what happened next—’

She stopped.

‘Mrs. Pugh?’ Maggie murmured.

‘Not sure I should tell you any more.’

‘Do you want to talk to a lawyer?’

‘I don’t trust lawyers. Besides, I didn’t know a thing about what went on back then. I don’t blame Dr. Janine for what she did. Guess I don’t blame Seymour either. He felt he had a debt to pay. We owed her in ways you can’t measure.’

They didn’t press her, but they waited.