‘Ah. I heard something about that all right.’

‘I don’t think Robbie really minded the accusation of sleeping with Zara. On some level he was proud of it, I suspect. But the bit about Gavin sniffing around Mary was humiliating. Gavin had been in and out of their house, doing the garden, but by all accounts, finding any excuse to sit in the kitchen with Mary. And Robbie didn’t like that one bit.’

‘So he took it out on Mary?’

Ruth nods. ‘Robbie lost it after everyone left that night; kicked her, hit her, then he punched a framed picture in the dining room – a photograph of Mary’s hometown if I remember correctly – and threatened her with a shard of broken glass. He ended up with his arm in a sling because of it – bruised knuckles and a sprained wrist.’ Ruth shakes her head. ‘Everyone blamed Eddie Hogan for that.’

‘God, poor Mary. Putting up with all that and nobody to confide in. Della right next door, with no idea what was going on.’

‘Della had five children of her own, there wasn’t an ounce of peace in that house. The earth could have opened up and swallowed Mary’s house and Della wouldn’t have heard it. And you can’t see in the windows of Number Six from next door.’

There’s something about the way she says it.

‘Wait, do you mean you can see in the windows from somewhere else? From your old house?’

Ruth smiles but it’s tinged with sadness. ‘The irony is, Robbie was always obsessed with cutting those treetops to get more sun, but if you went down to the bottom of my garden, you could see right through the middle, where the trees were thinner. You could see the Murphys’ garden clear as day, and all the way into the windows at the back of the house. The kitchen, the dining room. Their bedroom.’

‘Ah.’

‘I saw all sorts, once I started paying attention. Sometimes they were on the bench at the end of their garden, and I was only twenty feet away in mine. They never knew I was there. I could hear everything if they were outside or even if they had the patio doors open. The arguments, the odd push, the look on her face when his tone changed. The boring conversations about dinner that would suddenly take a turn towards anger. Or not. That was the thing. I never knew which way it would go. Mary never knew. That was the hardest bit, I think. She could never tell if or when he’d turn on her, or how to steer the conversation so it wouldn’t happen.’

‘Life on eggshells. On a knife blade.’ I grew up in a house like that – watching every word that came out of my mouth, waiting nervously for a reaction.

‘And there was no answer, no magic trick to avoid upsetting Robbie. It seemed to be utterly on a whim.’

‘Did Mary never call the police?’