“About a year,” she said. “ On and off. He went away a lot. On business.”

“What business was that?”

She shrugged. “He’d never tell me,” she said. “And in the end I thought it better not to ask.”

“But you guessed?”

“I suppose so.”

“Didn’t it make any difference to you?” George asked. “The fact that Greg was a drug dealer?”

She looked at him, wondering if he would understand if she explained. Perhaps she decided he was too old. “ Look,” she said. “He was fun. At first that was enough.”

Yes, George thought. It was true. Greg had been fun. He said nothing, and she took his silence as condemnation.

“You can’t understand what it was like!” she said. “I’ve been in care since I was six. First I was in a children’s home, like a workhouse, run by a bunch of nuns. Then they moved me to a foster family. They were all right, kind enough, but kids moved through that house like peas on a conveyor belt. Short-term care, they called it, and they were only used to giving short-term love. I got left there for some reason, and the love ran out. When I was sixteen, I was out on my own, and since then no one’s given a monkey’s what happened to me. I felt I’d missed out on everything. I wanted a good time, colour, music, excitement. Two years ago I met Greg. He made me feel so special. You don’t know. He’d send me flowers. Bring me presents. Take me out dancing all night. Then he’d disappear, sometimes for weeks. It was birdwatching, he’d say. It was always birdwatching.”

“He really was a birdwatcher,” George said.

“I know.” And for the first time since he had told her of Greg’s death, she smiled. “ Sometimes I went out with him. It was such fun. Everyone seemed to know him. I went to Porthkennan once and stayed at Myrtle Cottage.”

“But you thought that sometimes he used birdwatching as an excuse?”

She nodded. “At first I thought he was going away with other women. Perhaps he was. I wouldn’t have minded. As long as he came back to me. And he always did. Then sometimes he would have so much money. Hundreds, thousands of pounds, all in cash. When I asked what he did, he said he was an entrepreneur. He bought and sold, he said. Whatever people wanted.”

“When did you start work for Mr. Barnes?”

The sudden change of question did not appear to surprise her. Shock had made her passive, responsive. She would be afraid of taking the initiative. Besides, she was used to doing as she was told.

“About three years ago. I took a typing course straight after school; then I went to work in his office. Just as a junior at first, typing and filing. I became his personal assistant six months ago.”