‘My friend?!’ I echo, my free hand rising, unwittingly, to my mouth, my cheeks reddening. And then, straight after, ‘Oh, I don’t think Mr Huff would … I really can’t think he’d stoop to …’

(Yes! Yes! Exactly! Defending him! To Alys. After … after …

Quite extraordinary!)

‘He’s the only person I can really think of,’ Alys persists. ‘In fact, if I remember correctly, he asked me for it – the number. And I just … I reeled it off. I gave it to him without so much as a second thought.’

‘But why would Mr Huff …?’ I wonder, perturbed.

‘I don’t know,’ she muses, ‘but after our conversation the other day – yours and mine, I mean – I sat down for a second and I had a good think about it – about what you’d said – and I realized that … I don’t know … maybe I had been a little taken in by his charm. Maybe I had been a little bit too … too forthcoming. I think it was just … just seeing all those amazing photographs. This feeling of such … such enormous well-being engulfed me. Of recognition. Yearning. To suddenly be presented with all this tangible evidence of … I don’t know … something that seems like a kind of a … a … a dream, almost. Something I’ve thought about so much over the years, and nurtured and analysed and protected and … and defended. And doubted. Even doubted! Really doubted, sometimes – as a faithful Catholic! It just brought the whole … whole experience crashing back into this extraordinarily clear focus again and I … I suppose I got a little carried away. I let my guard down.’

‘Did you hear about Kimberly Couzens?’ I ask.

‘Sorry?’

‘The photographer. Kimberly Couzens. She died. She’s dead. Last weekend, apparently.’

Alys inhales, sharply.

‘It was all very sudden,’ I continue. ‘It was actually on the day that I … When we last spoke. Which I suppose was why he – Mr Huff – was so strange and rude when we bumped into each other on the beach that afternoon.’

‘Heaven forbid! Not on the same day you …?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! So what did you …? How on earth did you go about—’

‘Apologizing?’ I interrupt. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Sorry?’ She’s confused.

‘I didn’t.’

‘You didn’t actually tell him that …?’

‘No. No. I couldn’t, Alys. Not once I found out. I mean there was the landslip – as you know, and then everything went a bit … a bit crazy for a while. A certain amount of time passed by – too much, really. And so I just … I decided that I might as well just—’

‘Oh poor Carla!’ she interrupts. ‘What a mess!’

‘Yes.’

‘And poor Mr Huff!’ she adds. ‘Were they close? I don’t actually remember him mentioning what the connection between them was …’

‘They were married.’

Shocked silence.

‘Kimberly Couzens was Mr Huff’s wife,’ I expand.