“And …” Phyllis left a dramatic pause. “You know what I’m going to ask.”

I did.

She crossed her arms. “What’s going on with you and the sergeant?”

And there it was, the question I’d been trying to answer for myself the past six months. I pulled into the square, parked and put my head on the steering wheel. “Oh Phyllis, I don’t know.”

She placed her hand gently on my shoulder. “Go on. Tell me. You know I won’t tell anyone else.”

I smiled. The odd thing was, I did know that. Despite Phyllis being a desperate gossip, and a close observer of people, everything she passed on was out of genuine concern. She hated injustice and if keeping a secret involved facilitating that injustice, she was happy to be known as the blabbermouth who couldn’t keep her mouth shut. But if you told her something in confidence, she was utterly trustworthy.

I took a deep breath, looking straight ahead as the rain streamed down the windscreen. A white mark, which had remained there throughout the heavy blasts, was still there, illustrating the stubborn staying power of a bird dropping.

“He asked me to marry him.”

“What?” Phyllis’s voice rose several octaves. I was surprised people outside on the street couldn’t hear her. “Molloy?” She sat back, looking pleased. “Well, I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“I haven’t said yes.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Have you not? And why’s that now?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was an odd proposal.”

Phyllis cut across me. “I’m not sure what you expected – he is odd, Molloy. Mightily attractive but decidedly odd …”

I looked across at her, amused. “Really? Mightily attractive?”

“Of course.” She gave me a nudge. “And don’t change the subject. What are you going to do?”

“I truly don’t know. We weren’t even together when he asked me. We’d broken up when he was in Cork and then he reappeared at Leah’s wedding when there were those murders last summer.” I looked across at her. “He just came out with it. I don’t know if he asked because I was seeing Harry, or what. I just didn’t see it coming. Even if we’d still been together, it would have been unexpected. I didn’t know how to react.”

Phyllis grinned. “So is that why you ran away to America?”

“Maybe.” I nodded. “Something like that – I had pretty much decided to go anyway. I needed a change of scene. But I did go a little early.”

She clicked her teeth. “Poor Molloy.”

Suddenly I felt sheepish. I’d never really thought about Molloy’s feelings. He was so damn stoic a lot of the time that it was sometimes easy to forget he was capable of having them.