‘The beginning was simple,’ she said. ‘A frustrated middle-aged woman fancying a good-looking young man. And a student choosing experience over innocence. Or wanting his cake and eating it. It happened one night when Hannah was out. Simon came to visit her, but she’d been held up and Jenny asked him in to wait. Offered him a glass of wine.’ She shrugged, held up her glass. ‘Terrible stuff, alcohol.’

She looked round the table and saw that she had them hooked, like bairns listening to a bedtime story.

‘Simon kissed her,’ she said. ‘Nothing else then and he apologized, but that was the start of it. Jenny became obsessed with him and an affair developed. He was flattered by her attention, I think. Why wouldn’t he be? She was still lovely. They met every week in Durham. Jenny wanted to see Mattie anyway to get information for the book. She went first to see Mattie. The prison visits were short. Jenny was there as much to make herself feel better about screwing her daughter’s man as to collect information for her great work of literature. Really she was desperate to spend time with the boy.’

She paused, topped up her glass, and imagined herself as Jenny Lister, counting off the hours until she could spend time with Simon Eliot in his student house. ‘Then guilt set in, as it always does.’ Again she looked at Ashworth. ‘It’s a terrible thing, guilt. Not everyone can cope with it.’ Another grin.

‘So why did Simon Eliot kill her?’ Charlie could understand the sex part, Vera saw that; it was the violence he didn’t get.

‘Eh, Charlie man, give a woman the chance to tell a story in her own time.’

Vera had asked Taylor to leave the whisky bottle on the table and tipped a little more into her glass. Bugger the doctors and their healthy living – tonight she needed to get pleasantly pissed.

‘While Jenny Lister was besotted with her young lover, Michael Morgan had taken up with pretty little Freya. About the same sort of age difference between both couples, though we don’t talk about Jenny corrupting Simon, do we? Then Jenny found out from Mattie that Freya was pregnant and she became involved in the Morgan case again. It all got a bit close to home, didn’t it? Suddenly it would have hit her that she was screwing Mattie’s half-brother . . .’ Vera half closed her eyes and thought about chance and the coincidence of Jenny Lister and Veronica Eliot living in the same village. But Northumberland was the least-populated county in England and in small communities there were always connections. ‘She decided it had to stop. And being honourable and really stupid, she decided she’d have to come clean to Hannah. Simon couldn’t stand that. Hannah worshipped him. They were engaged, after all, a big commitment for a couple that young.’