‘I dunno, she thought she’d found the place or summit, but she couldn’t find ’im, no. Mebbe I wasn’ remembrin’ his name right, I dunno. She used to go on an’ fuckin’ on; what did ’e look like, where was ’e studyin’. I said to ’er, he was tall an’ skinny an’ you wanna be grateful you got my ears, not ’is, ’cause there wouldna bin no fuckin’ modellin’ career if you’d got them fucking elephant lugs.’

‘Did Lula ever talk to you about her friends?’

‘Oh, yeah. There was that little black bitch, Raquelle, or whatever she called ’erself. Leechin’ all she could outta Lula. Oh, she did herself all right. Fuckin’ clothes an’ jewell’ry an’ I-dunno-what-the-fuck else. I sez to Lula once, “I wouldn’ mind a new coat.” But I wasn’ pushy, see. That Raquelle din’ mind askin’.’

She sniffed, and drained her glass.

‘Did you ever meet Rochelle?’

‘That was ’er name, was it? Yeah, once. She come along in a fuckin’ car with a driver to pick Lula up from seein’ me. Like Lady Muck out the back window, sneerin’ at me. She’ll be missin’ all of that now, I ’spect. In it for all she could get.

‘An’ there was that Ciara Porter,’ Marlene ploughed on, with, if possible, even greater spite, ‘sleepin’ with Lula’s boyfriend the night she fuckin’ died. Nasty fuckin’ bitch.’

‘Do you know Ciara Porter?’

‘I seen it in the fuckin’ papers. ’E wen’ off to ’er place, di’n’t ’e, Evan? After he rowed with Lula. Went to Ciara. Fuckin’ bitch.’

It became clear, as Marlene talked on, that Lula had kept her natural mother firmly segregated from her friends, and that, with the exception of a brief glimpse of Rochelle, Marlene’s opinions and deductions about Lula’s social set were based entirely on the press reports she had greedily consumed.

Strike fetched more drinks, and listened to Marlene describe the horror and shock she had experienced on hearing (from the neighbour who had run in with the news, early in the morning of the 8th) that her daughter had fallen to her death from her balcony. Careful questioning revealed that Lula had not seen Marlene for two months before she died. Strike then listened to a diatribe about the treatment she had received from Lula’s adoptive family, following the model’s death.