‘On the beach. Down at the far end where Andy found her clothes. We’ll have a little gathering on the beach first. Beth has a couple of ideas on that score. After that, one of the local fishermen will be only too happy to take us offshore. We’re having a wreath made up. Beth’s idea, again. She’s been talking to the girls whom Christianne used to swim with. There’s a line of buoys a hundred metres out, a kind of fence they had to touch before they went back to the beach. A prayer in situ? Maybe in French?’ He’s looking at me. ‘And then a moment or two of silence after we cast the wreath on the waters. How might that sound?’

Both Evelyn and I are thrilled by the idea. Back at the bungalow, we agree that this gesture is pitch-perfect, neither a showy act of collective grief, nor a passing nod to register an event that has clearly touched so many lives. Best of all, it puts Andy’s arrest in exactly the right context. No one is questioning the rights of the police to investigate a death like Christianne’s, least of all in this little town, but the wider context remains far more important. She took her own life in the fullest knowledge of how it would otherwise end. And while everyone will miss her, everyone will – or should – understand.

Evelyn and I eat a late supper and raise a glass of Chablis to tomorrow’s get-together. We’re settling into Match of the Day, which Evelyn adores, when I hear a car pulling up outside. Her beloved Man City are playing Watford. After the first fifteen minutes, the home team are already four goals up and, given Evelyn’s passion for Kevin de Bruyne, she’s totally absorbed.

At the window, curious, I check through a tiny gap in the curtains. McFaul is getting out of a taxi. As I watch, he bends to the driver’s window and hands over some money. Then, without another word, he’s limping slowly towards his front door. The cab driver pulls a three-point turn and moments later the street is empty again. One of Evelyn’s windows is open and I can hear the scrape of McFaul’s key in his front door. The man has just spent two and a half days in police custody, I think. The last couple of nights, he’d have slept in some cell, and now he must confront the emptiness of a bungalow he probably never liked in the first place. And all this without the company, the solace, of a woman I’m certain he loved.

I steal a glance at Evelyn.