‘Simply go back to Mulberry,’ Kim sighed (with typical clarity), making it sound like the simplest undertaking in the whole world, ‘and just inhale the atmosphere. You missed out the first time around. Aren’t you intrigued to have a little snoop about? Apparently they’ve kept the cottage exactly as it was – like a kind of shrine. They do short- and medium-term rentals. They’re very picky about tenants, though, so keep your head down. Be discreet. Why not invite Lara along for the ride? Build some bridges. Make it into a little holiday! I’ll cover all expenses from the advance. Try and reach out to the people who were there – on the periphery, in the background. Knit. Walk. Relax. Breathe. It doesn’t have to be the final word or anything, just a … I don’t know … a cut and paste job – a kind of collage, a human collage.’

‘But none of them will talk!’ I argued.

‘Several of them already have,’ she corrected me. And she was perfectly right. Several had.

Of course what I didn’t tell Kimberly was that we actually needed way more than that. To raise any kind of worthwhile sum on the photos I’d had to make a series of strategic promises to the publisher – moral compromises, of sorts – which Kimberly (as yet) had no inkling of. They wanted to smash the whole Bran Cleary cover-up wide open. They wanted a hatchet job on Kalinda. And Orla? That all-too-familiar ‘victim of circumstance’ schtick writ large: the ever-popular ‘vulnerable minor led astray by the wicked Catholic machinations of Father Hugh Tierney’ angle.

Why did they want these things, exactly? Oh … They wanted them because, well, I’d promised them. I’d offered them all up on a platter. Kim’d thank me for it in the long term, I was certain. Once I’d exonerated her – and, by extension, myself – once the royalties started rolling in. She said it herself: I was a consummate professional (a professional what, though?! Cuckold? Fool? Dupe?).

Let’s face it – this was the story dear, old Kimberly (dead Kimberly) was too close to tell: the awful truth. Although how to gain access to it, first-hand? Kim was right: several people had spoken out publicly, yes, but only the small players – the bit parts – and never candidly. Father Tierney had become a Benedictine monk and entered a monastery. He was virtually a non-starter. Father Paul Lynch (of Rye, now retired) had proven curiously gnomic and diffident. Seems they’d all contracted the disease Kim herself had fallen prey to.

Although Carla Hahn, Kim had confided, was definitely the one to watch out for. She’d been the family’s nanny and cleaner during their time in Pett Level and had later inherited the house. ‘She was very quiet, rarely spoke. I don’t know why, but I always thought of her as “the other camera”. She had this strangely unsettling watchful quality about her. Engaged but unengaged. Hardly uttered a word to me the whole week I was there. Smiled a lot. A strange girl, very tight – tender – with the child, training to be a nurse.’