And that way you don’t have to drive home after we’ve been to the pub. But he didn’t say anything. He’d have to drive back anyway – Sarah would kill him if he turned up pissed in a taxi. He’d already phoned her to say he’d be very late. She wouldn’t be expecting him yet. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

Vera’s house was the most inconvenient place to live in the whole county. Stuck halfway up a hill along a track that was always blocked by the first snow and that turned into a river as soon as it rained. For her personal use she still drove Hector’s Land Rover, and he’d never known her not show up for work because of the weather. Joe suspected the dippy hippies turned out with shovels to dig her out, in recompense for her turning a blind eye to what went on in their house, or maybe she camped out in the pub in the nearest village if the forecast was bad. She would never move now. She’d grown up in the hills and got twitchy and bad-tempered if she had to leave them for more than a day.

But the view was fantastic, Joe had to give her that. Too dark to appreciate it now, but he remembered it from previous visits. Open moorland as far as you could see, and a small lough where the geese came in winter. In the valley, the River Coquet that ended up at the coast, and from her house a bird’s-eye view of a small grey village and a peel tower. Her neighbours had been through lambing and, even inside, they could hear the ewes. There was never any traffic noise. Nothing but the occasional jet on a training flight from RAF Boulmer as it flew low, following the line of the valley.

They sat in her house and talked about Jenny Lister and then about Danny Shaw. He took a bottle of beer and drank it slowly; she’d had three by the time he’d finished. As good as her word, she made sandwiches and between munches she talked, hardly giving him a chance to speak. Occasions like this, that was his role: to be an audience, her sounding board. It was how she best processed information. Once, exasperated after a late night of listening to her holding forth, he’d asked her why she needed him there at all. ‘You take no notice of anything I say. You’d do just as well without me.’

She’d been astonished. ‘Nonsense, lad. If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t bother to think things through. You make me focus.’ She’d paused. ‘And now and again you come up with a few good ideas.’