‘How long have you known Margaret?’ Sometimes Vera thought it was best to start with simple facts. Something for the person to hang on to, to pull their thoughts away from the shock and the grief.

Kate dabbed at her eyes. ‘Ten years,’ she said. ‘The kids were small. My aunt died – she was some sort of distant relative by marriage. I never knew her, and we lived up the coast. But she’d left me this house in her will. It wasn’t a guest house then, but it had been converted into a bunch of bedsits and flats. All tatty. Most empty. Margaret was the only tenant with any sort of lease.’ She paused for breath. ‘I was bored. It wasn’t the best time of my life. My husband worked away a lot. Ryan was already at school, Chloe at playgroup. I thought it would be a project, that Mardle was on its way up and that soon the tourists would arrive. Got that one wrong, didn’t I?’

She shrugged wryly.

‘At first I thought having Margaret here would be a problem – that she’d, sort of, get in the way.’ Kate stopped again and gave a wide and lovely smile. ‘But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. She was wonderful, and it would have been a nightmare without her. She was like a mother and a best friend all rolled into one. We negotiated a deal. She’d keep her little flat in the attic, rent-free, and help out in the house. And I’d pay her when I could. She’s been on a proper salary since the first guests arrived.’

From the corner of her eye Vera saw Joe Ashworth making notes, but she was trying to picture this big house being renovated, the builders in, two women full of plans and ideas for its future, small kids under their feet. That would make you close, and she felt a pang of loss – she’d never had a best friend, no one with whom she could share her dreams. The nearest she had was Joe Ashworth.

‘Margaret Krukowski,’ she said. ‘That’s a Polish name?’

‘Yes, but Margaret wasn’t Polish. North-East born and bred, and from a respectable Newcastle family. She married a Polish seaman when she was very young. Her parents were outraged, but it was the Sixties and she said he was very handsome and a refugee, which made it all the more romantic.’

‘What happened to him?’ Vera liked this victim already, liked the complexity of her. Joe had said Margaret looked more Gosforth than Mardle, but she’d taken up with a Polish asylum-seeker and ended up alone in a scuzzy bedsit. Still keeping up appearances, though. Still smart, with the boots and the red lipstick; the long coat that would have cost a fortune new.