It was Barbour jacket man, the man I suspected was Lissa’s husband, Chris. He glared at Phyllis who glared back at him. The bookseller was never one to take rudeness lying down.

“You’re welcome, you rude skitter,” she called after him.

He strode off and we watched him climb into his car.

“I’m not surprised Derek Jameson had him by the throat,” she muttered. “That’s the man from the pub, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Who the hell is he anyway?”

I sighed. “I wish I knew.”

I glanced back at his car as we made our way over the stones and down onto the sand. Was he Lissa’s husband? He was about the right age and there was something surly and unpleasant about him, but I couldn’t be remotely sure.

Phyllis was still thinking about Mary. She kicked at the seaweed as we walked along the shore. “It’s not easy loving someone who belongs to someone else, you know.”

Phyllis was clearly biased because Mary was her friend, but I suspected Amanda’s allies would feel differently. It made me wonder for the first time about Phyllis’s own romantic past.

Fred came rushing back and she threw a stick for him. “It’s all about marriage here. No matter how liberal we pretend we are.”

“Maybe,” I smiled. I wondered what Phyllis would think of my chat with Molloy this morning. I’d tell her when I got the chance.

But, now, she was in full flow. “There was a couple in Glendara, a wile nice couple, but they split up. It happens, nothing wrong with that.” Phyllis waved her hand dismissively. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. They both moved on. She had a new partner, he moved to Buncrana and had a new baby, with a much younger woman, of course.” She grinned at that.

“Go on.”

“Then, very suddenly, the wife died, heart attack or something, I can’t remember rightly. It was very sad. And at the corp-house, he’s there, the ex-husband, in prime position beside the coffin. That’s fine, a bit odd he’s beside the coffin, but maybe you’d expect him to be since they have kids together. But at the funeral, there he is again, the ex-husband, sitting at the top of the church, front row, the chief mourner.”

I looked at her. “Really?”

She brushed away a lock of hair in the wind. “Pretending everything was just as it was, as if they’d never split up.”

“Even though everyone knew they weren’t together?”

She nodded. “Even though everyone knew they hadn’t been together for years, that they both had new relationships. God knows where her new partner was, or his – down the back with the gravediggers probably.”