‘Not a very successful betrayal.’

‘No. What were you thinking just now?’

‘How I was twenty-four hours ago.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I had been on the move since I killed my mother. I thought I might get to France, might meet someone with a boat who would take me across. That’s what I thought early on. Then I decided it was all too silly. I’d wait until dark and go out with the tide. The police have been no help at all.’ Hugh laughed. ‘I’ve discovered how to run away successfully in this country.’

‘How?’

‘For starters you don’t mind whether you are caught or not. You never hurry. You ask the way, if possible from a policeman. He will obligingly tell you. I even went into a police station and stood by a wanted poster of myself and asked the way to the bus station. They gave me a lift in a Panda.’

‘Where was that?’

‘Salisbury, I think. If you run you are chased. If you wander about unworried nobody bothers.’

‘You were just lucky.’

‘No. The nearest I ever got to getting caught was when you started helping me.’

‘Thanks!’

‘I do. But now I don’t want to be caught. I’m dead scared.’

‘Oh.’

‘I keep thinking you will send for the police. I thought when you went to the village that you would get them then, that I would find them waiting when I came back from the wood. I thought just now you might dial 999 not the goose man. I’m sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry about. I’m a great betrayer.’

‘Not really.’

‘Half of me is. I hoped you’d be gone, taking Folly, when I came back from the village. I thought having a dog with you would be splendid camouflage. I didn’t want to get involved and then –’

‘Then?’

‘Then I thought I do want to be involved, it’s fun.’

‘Fun? Who for?’

‘Me. I’ve had no fun for years.’

‘I wondered whether you were mad.’

‘Menopause?’

‘Yes.’

‘No way – beastly expression – but it applies, it’s true. This is fun, let’s make a success of it.’

‘Harbouring a murderer is a criminal offence. Don’t be frivolous.’

‘Don’t be so conventional. People are conventional, we can’t do without them. In your case, in my life, I’ve no room for it.’

‘Oh.’

‘If you want to go to the police yourself or throw yourself into the sea –’ Matilda flushed, getting angry.

‘And what will you do?’

‘Kill Gus, have Folly destroyed, wait for the tide to be right and swim out as I’d planned.’

‘Such despair.’

‘We have equal despair. Your despair could cancel mine, that’s all.’

‘Blackmail now.’

‘If that’s what you like to call it.’

They stared at one another with horror.

‘We are getting a bit near the knuckle,’ Hugh murmured.

Matilda nodded.