She sat down edgily again at the long table. ‘Terence was here about a week ago, Stu and I asked him down here, we wanted to look after him for a few days – he’s still far from well you know – and to see how we could help him. And his main priority seemed to be not his health, and not his rape case which he’s certain he can’t lose – he kept talking in that infuriatingly simple way of his about “British Justice” for God’s sake – but to keep this other bloody stabbing case out of court. He’s obsessed about it, says Nicky mustn’t be brought in to it.’

‘But why? What would he care about Nicky Abbott for, no one’s seen her for thirty years, and she tried to kill him for God’s sake!’

Elvira sat down again at the table, finally looked up at Pauline. ‘You’re not going to believe this Pauly but – Nicky Abbott was his first wife.’

‘What?’

‘He married her in 1961.’

‘Good God!’ Pauline stared at Elvira, open-mouthed. ‘Good God!’ she repeated. ‘How long for? What happened?’

‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t say, just told me they’d been married. And that she mustn’t be brought into court, that everything was his fault. He seems to be trying to convince himself that the CPS won’t bring a prosecution in the stabbing business, that they can’t do it without his evidence – but they will you know, he just doesn’t seem to understand the law. He seems desperate to protect her – yet he admits he hadn’t seen her, till the reunion, for more than thirty years. And can you believe it, he’s stopped drinking.’

Elvira looked down at her empty coffee cup, shook her head slightly and Pauline remembered the many battles Elvira and Terence had had about his intake of alcohol.

‘You know, when he told me last week that he’d actually been married when he was young you could’ve knocked me down with a feather in the true sense of that cliché, I nearly fainted. And of course I asked him all sorts of questions. But he wouldn’t talk any more about it, how long they were married, what happened to her, it was as if –’ and she paused for a moment ‘– as if he’d, I don’t know, choke if he said any more. Just one thing he said – and I felt as if he were trying to explain to me, or apologise to me. He said that the first time he’d seen Iona Spring, standing in a corner of a room at a party she had reminded him, for a split second, of Nicky when she was young. He said, “Just for a moment it all was – there – again” and his face looked so sad somehow that I wanted to cry.