‘I’m still Zoopla-ing, even though they’re always the same ones. By now I know every inch of them, don’t you? The one with the greyhound cages in the garden, remember? The one with the glimpse of the sea from the upstairs loo. We were well out of that one. Do you remember, we flirted with it for a bit?’

Did I know what was coming? Was that why I was babbling?

I poured the beans into the grinder. ‘I wonder what’s happened to Calvin’s house,’ I said. ‘Whether they’ve impounded it or something. The fridge had one of those icemakers in the door. I’ve always fancied one of those.’ I screwed the lid on the grinder. ‘It was one of those houses that has dodgy money written all over it. So not our sort of place. Marble everywhere, like a morgue. And eerily tidy—he was quite obsessive—not a speck of dust. In fact, now one knows the truth, it looks exactly like the house of a murderer.’

I pressed down the lid. The motor sprang to life and the beans ground, noisily. Azra’s mouth opened and closed. She was saying something but I couldn’t hear.

I finished grinding and unscrewed the lid. ‘Sorry. What was that?’

Azra looked at me steadily. ‘I said, it takes one to know one.’

‘Takes one what?’

‘A murderer.’

Six

Six

There was a silence.

Azra said: ‘You pushed him off that cliff, didn’t you?’

I filled the kettle. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I’ve always known,’ she said. ‘Greg wasn’t that unsteady. He was still in the early stages—Parkinson’s takes years—he was keeping himself fit, jogging every day.’ Her voice was calm, almost conversational. ‘There’s no way he just fell off a cliff. Were you having a quarrel or something, was that it?’

‘Azra, darling, I wasn’t even there.’

‘Oh yes you were.’

‘Look, I know it was horribly upsetting for you—for all of us—but there’s no need to take it out on me.’

‘You were there that day.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘You were.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘The farmer saw you.’

‘What?’

‘Your neighbour, the farmer.’

‘He couldn’t have. There was nobody around, just the dogs—’ I stopped dead.

Azra snapped shut the lid of her laptop. ‘Exactly.’

Do you know? Just for a moment, it was a relief. Just for a moment, I felt weightless. Only then did I realise the burden I’d been carrying around, all this time.

In fact, it’s the most enormous relief, telling you.

Azra sat back in her chair, her head cocked, considering me. She laced her fingers together.

‘You’re one crazy woman,’ she said. ‘Bat-shit crazy.’

I didn’t speak.

‘Did you plan it?’ she asked. ‘Did you go there, knowing you were going to do it?’

‘You’re the crazy person, thinking I’d do that.’