“She said Amanda knows about herself and Bob.”

Phyllis breathed in sharply. “Oh God, that won’t make things any easier for either of them. I didn’t exactly warm to the wife, but she was his wife and she has got two children with him. She hasn’t had it easy either.”

I slowed down at a large area of water on my side of the road, stopped and waited for the cars on the other side to pass.

“What do you know about the relationship between Mary and Bob?” I asked.

Phyllis rubbed her sleeve against the window. The car was beginning to steam up with two people and a dog breathing in the same space. “She never came out and said that she was having an affair with him. But she wouldn’t, would she? I mean, people don’t.”

“But was she?” I felt as if I was cross examining in court. Trying to get to a particularly slippery truth.

Phyllis looked at me with a half-smile. “Oh, I think so, aye.”

“So she did meet him then? It wasn’t just emails and text messages?” The way ahead was clear so I pulled out to overtake.

“Oh, she met him all right. Not consistently over the thirty years or whatever it was. I think years would go by when she didn’t see him. He worked abroad quite a bit.”

“London and Nigeria?”

Phyllis nodded. “I think there were periods when they weren’t even in touch, not just the times when he was out of the country.” She sighed deeply. “And then he would reappear in her life and the whole thing would start again. I don’t know if it was at his instigation or hers. But she would seem very happy for a while and then sad again. As if her hopes had been raised and then dashed. I don’t know if they would break contact at her instigation or his. I suspect his.”

“Did she talk to you about it?”

Phyllis shook her head. “Ach, not really. She’s quite guarded, Mary.” She smiled. “For the most part I think she’s very self-sufficient. Pretty content. Loves Inishowen. You’d be hard pressed to get her to leave it. You know she swims miles every day?”

“Yes.”

“But whatever it was about him, she loved Bob Jameson. Gave her heart to him when she was young and never got it back. But she only ever had part of him.”

“So it seems.”

“If I dared to suggest that she break contact with him and cut him out of her life she’d shut me down and not talk to me for ages. So, I just stopped doing that.”

“And recently? Has there been more contact between them than usual?”