Elvira was doing this for Terence. But Pauline would be doing it for herself. Elvira angrily brushed her own tears for Terence away. Life was like this. Who knew better than a crime-writer?

‘He agrees,’ repeated Elvira. ‘I don’t think he’s got much choice now. He sees – he sees it will help Nicky of course, if he tells the story right. But I think he also sees now that it’s the only way he can help himself. Anyway, yes, he agrees.’

‘To everything?’

‘Yes Pauly, to everything.’

Pauline let out a long, long sigh, as if she had been holding her breath for weeks. ‘Aaaaaaah,’ she sighed. ‘Aaaah, good.’

Elvira heard the sigh. ‘You’re sure you can do it Pauly? It won’t be easy, so much will depend on you – and Terence will almost certainly go to jail if we don’t get this right, never mind your own hopes and dreams. It’s much much harder than you think to stand up there in the way you’re going to have to. You’ll have to be tough under lots of pressure.’

‘I’m tough,’ said Pauline. ‘Rehearse me tomorrow night. I’ll be wearing my red lipstick.’

When she’d put the phone down she stood there for a moment in the warm hall of the house she had so loved. It had been snowing again. From where she stood she could look out across the river, white flakes drifted silently across the lawn in the darkness. Not regret, but memory hovered there in the night on the stairs: the life she had made for herself and her family.

One more Sunday lunch. She had left a note for Viola in her room earlier in the week: Darling, do try and be here for Sunday lunch. I’d love to see your face to see if I remember it. The roast beef and the peach pie waited in the big refrigerator to do their last duty.

There would be other lives.

Pauline O’Brien found she was smiling in the empty hall. And then she walked slowly upstairs in her blue silk dressing gown to the bedroom where her husband snored loudly.

*