‘Is she okay?’ Charlie felt guilty for caring more now than she had before. So that’s why Ruth had come to her last Friday. If the person you most admire works for the police, and your boyfriend’s scaring you out of your wits saying he murdered someone, the next step is obvious, surely—almost meant to be. And when you see that the object of your admiration doesn’t have a clue how to help you, what do you think then?

‘No one knows where Bussey is, Gibbs said. Same with Seed and Trelease.’

‘She hadn’t put any pictures of herself up,’ Charlie said quietly. She looked at Simon. ‘On the wall. Did the book say you’re supposed to put up your favourite photos of yourself?’

‘I think that’s what Gibbs said, yeah.’

Charlie knew why Ruth hadn’t got that far with the exercise: eighteen months after wasting her money on a self-esteem manual, she still didn’t like any pictures of herself. Flattering or unflattering, it didn’t matter; all images of her were images of a victim, someone to be reviled or pitied depending on your point of view. Takes one to know one.

‘What? What are you thinking?’

‘Nothing.’

Simon looked stumped. Charlie guessed he was wondering how hard he ought to try to make her talk about her feelings, and hoping that the answer was not at all.

‘I’d live where I live now,’ he said, after a few seconds of awkward silence.

‘Sorry?’

‘You asked me before—where I’d live if I could live anywhere. ’

A quick glance told her he meant it. ‘Where you live now? You mean Spilling, or your house?’

‘My house is in Spilling. I mean both. I like where I am—why would I want to live anywhere else?’

‘I’d live in Torquay,’ Charlie heard her voice harden as she said it. No way was she moving into Simon’s place after they were married. The kitchen was as narrow as a drainpipe and the bathroom was downstairs, behind it. The house was right on the pavement, too; people peered into the lounge as they walked past. And it was too close to Simon’s parents. No way.

‘I’d never live by the sea,’ he said. ‘It’s one big, blue dead-end. I’d feel hemmed in.’

‘You wouldn’t be.’ What other insane opinions was he harbouring that she didn’t know about? ‘You could take a boat.’

‘Mary Trelease killed Gemma Crowther. To get her picture back—Abberton.’

There goes our intimate chat, thought Charlie. She added ‘wouldn’t like to live by the sea’ to the list of what she knew about her fiancé.