He left and went to his study. I could hear him opening and closing drawers, and then his steps as he went down the stairs and out into the back garden. I hauled myself to Hazel’s room, which overlooked the garden. Below me, Nick emerged from the shed hefting a rusted old brazier into the middle of the lawn. He crossed back towards the house and bent over to pick up something just out of my view before going back to the brazier and dumping what he carried into the iron cage. Small, folded pages spilled in. I guessed what they were. Pages that he had found himself unable to destroy, no matter how much he had wanted to.

After that he took a box of matches from his pocket and lighted the corner of one of the pages. The flame spread up the edge and along the other until the whole thing was a blaze of light. He threw it in and the brazier glowed, sending smoke up into the mist. As he watched them burn, I slipped downstairs to make a telephone call.

Tibbot answered. ‘Nick’s burning the letters from Lorelei,’ I told him.

‘Be careful,’ his voice crackled down the line.

‘I will be.’

I heard the handle of the back door turning. I shoved the receiver into the cradle and flew up the stairs as quietly as I could, all the while listening to Nick’s footsteps through the hallway. I heard him stop by the telephone. Had I put the receiver on the wrong way around? Had I moved it from where it was normally kept? But he opened the front door and I watched him from our bedroom window as he stepped out. He halted and I saw his head bow down. Then he turned around and looked up. For what seemed an age he just gazed at me. Then he turned back on his path and walked away.

‘What happened?’ Tibbot’s voice crackled down the line an hour later.

I tapped my fingernails on the hall mirror. ‘He came in.’

‘Right.’

‘Frank,’ I said. ‘I’m going to confront him. About Lorelei.’

‘Oh, Jane,’ he said, frustrated. ‘What do you think will come of it? He’ll tell you the truth? I spend days in rooms questioning people who have killed, raped, stolen. They don’t confess even then. He’s just going to tell you that you’re imagining things.’

‘I’m not imagining things.’

‘He’ll say you are.’

‘What else do you suggest?’ He was silent. He had to admit that he too could see no other move. ‘Frank, I can’t go on like this, wondering if he …’ I broke off, unable to continue, and leaned against the wall, with the handset by my side. ‘Can you come here by eleven thirty?’ I asked.