‘The accountant, it was a perfect political partnership, with his knowledge we cleaned the money through venture capital investments, start-ups, property and offshore investments, mainly in the Cayman Islands – it became virtually impossible to trace it back to me. We were clever, weren’t we? We most certainly were.’

The last remark was addressed not to Ever, but to her second dead husband, with a smile and an affection.

Ever was not responding now, he was in the first stages of a deep sleep. Lomita got up to plump the pillows; to bed him down for the night. Talking, while perfecting the lie of the bed.

‘My favourite house being in Mexico. I adore Mexico. We must go sometime. But the law didn’t leave me alone, I spent two million of those dollars defending myself in the courts. Can you believe this? Eventually they found four-fifths of an ounce of marijuana in my underwear drawer – I had never smoked the stuff in my life.’

She knew she had lost him completely now, the diazepam as well as being a relaxant is an anti-anxiety pill; she could see the tension drifting off his face like a passing cloud over the sun, revealing the brightness after the period of gloom.

‘The mob were after me, and the IRS, and eventually I owned up to three and a half million dollars. I just threw my hands in the air and said that was all I had, all I knew about.’

She had known he wasn’t listening but this was for her: she realised she had never recounted this story, and it gave her a sense of catharsis. She continued. It felt like an invitation to talk. To talk to herself. It gave her a sense of pride that she had survived.

‘Their real anger, from the authorities towards me, I think, was because I had fraternised with Jack Ruby who shot Lee Harvey Oswald and you know who he shot. They thought I knew something about it all. I didn’t. I was sentenced to fifteen years in jail, in the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, for some strange reason, the location I mean. My lawyers continued to fight my cause and eventually proved the drug was planted. That and the fact that the police had no warrant to enter my home got me cleared. But I spent two years in prison. Two years. Can you imagine that, two years?’

She was now almost enjoying addressing an unconscious audience. It was her reflection and consideration of her own life. She had no self-pity, just triumph.