‘Who, can you remember, was the last person to see Christine alive?’

A woman who lived by the beach, Clarice Egbert, had seen Christine for a therapy appointment. Christine would sit facing her clients in plastic doctor’s chairs in a windowless room. The room was part of an old building in the square above a gift shop that sold toys wrapped in cellophane. In this room she would make them go through a process of tapping. The room was mauve. Niall painted it a shade called ‘Recuperate’ and built the shelves around the edge for candles and a cabinet for the CD player. The man who rented the room was a friend of Sandy’s and let her use it for next to nothing.

‘Thank you for your answers, Niall. We know you would have been asked this before, but did you ever argue?’

He looks over at the sliding door. He wants it to open. He wants her to walk through. ‘No. Well, you know, only the usual.’ Somehow any disagreement they had now seems significant.

It is true that Christine was distant sometimes and they’d gone through periods in the four years they were together, not of arguments, but of silence. It would happen after his worst moments, the times he called her a whacko, a quack and once – and he winced at this – that she was exploiting vulnerable people. He didn’t think she ever forgave him for that one.

He remembers a book about wolves she owned and loved. A book about wolves and wild women. She could spend whole days walking in the woods without him. Or she would hold Lauren and say, ‘I want her to be wild.’ She used to build bonfires.

Before this, when she was heavily pregnant, she argued with him about birthing methods. She wanted to be ‘free’ of the hospital. He knew it scared her. She tried to eat natural foods and talked about ‘chemicals’ as if they were poison. She had a fear of her body being pushed into certain positions on the hospital bed. Of not being in control. She insisted on a home birth. He invoked God and the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘You realize, don’t you, you nutter, they’ll have to helicopter you to the hospital if anything goes wrong?’ he said.

There was so much testing of each other, pushing each other, so much that was fierce. So much shouting. He thinks of it now as passion rising from their words. He never admitted he loved that she was crazy. She didn’t care about anyone’s opinion of her, let alone his.

‘And, just so we’re clear, Christine was the mother of your daughter Lauren?’ A voice comes out of the ether. He nods.