She went back to the beginning. She’d been a lecturer at the teachers’ college, and some of her old fluency and authority returned as she told her story. In her fifth year of lecturing, aged twenty-eight, she’d met Martin. She didn’t use his name, talking to Hirsch: ‘That little man,’ she said.

The first years of marriage were okay. She worked, the little man worked, they made a home together. They had a daughter, and Joyce enjoyed staying home to raise her. But when she felt ready to go back to work, the little man thought it unwise. Her duty was to look after the home they’d made together. ‘I was a cliché,’ she said.

Depression crept up on her over the long years, chronic and incapacitating. She felt useless. Her friends drifted away, and Martin seemed to have none of his own.

‘That little man and his disappointments,’ she said. The missed opportunities he suffered, the forces that acted against him—anything from losing a job promotion to losing a parking spot. It was never just bad luck, and never involved a deficiency on his part.

Hirsch eyed the Myer shopping bag. Stuffed with something soft. Running-away clothes? She was holding on to it for dear life, anyway.

‘And he’d hit you sometimes?’

‘Not at first. Not for years. But recently, yes. You know what decided me? Or what decided me on top of everything else? When he hit poor Brenda. The exact same look on his face, the hatred.’

Coming to be near their daughter and her family in Tiverton had not been the cure for their miserable life. Annette had moved back to the city to get away from Martin and his obsessions. ‘So he immersed himself in this godforsaken place,’ Joyce said. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken. I was sent here. It’s growing on me, but I take your point.’

‘And when I say immersed, I mean he was into everything.’

‘I’ve worked out some of it,’ Hirsch said. ‘The Pandowie Downs apostrophe. Kip winning a dog prize he thought should have gone to your daughter’s dog.’

‘Kip was just the better dog,’ Joyce said. She shook her head as if you wouldn’t credit what made her husband tick. ‘Poor thing. We had him shut in the laundry for a week. I let him out one day when the little man was at the tennis club. I told him Kip shot out between my legs when I opened the door to feed him. I got a fist in the stomach for that little bit of defiance.’

‘He reported me to police headquarters in the city, you know. I had to go down and get hauled over the coals.’