‘Perhaps he has nothing to tell us, darling. I’m sure he’ll ring.’

‘Mum?’ Nikki said, suddenly putting her knife and fork down. ‘Do you want to know how Saffie died? Would it be better not to know?’

Fleur’s heart did a painful flip. How direct Nikki was, she had almost forgotten. Fleur was groping around, trying not to think, unsure what she hoped the pathologist would tell them. Eventually she said, ‘I don’t know, Nikki. If the pathologist has no idea, I think I’ll be relieved. But…I’ll go on being haunted by not knowing. If she can somehow tell…I have to then ask if it was quick…’ Her voice wavered. ‘How much Saffie would have known…and I don’t know if either of us could bear to hear it.’

She looked up and met Nikki’s eyes. They seemed to fill her face.

‘I don’t want to know, Mum. I don’t want to know.’ Nikki’s hands on the table trembled and she clutched them to her, not wanting Fleur to see.

‘Nikki,’ Fleur said quietly. ‘You don’t need to know…Oh, darling…’ She longed to rush round the table and hold Nikki but something in her daughter’s face forbade it. ‘I wish this hadn’t happened now, when you are so pregnant and vulnerable.’

‘Just wish it had never happened, Fleur.’ The words burst out of Nikki.

Shocked, Fleur’s hands flew up to her face. ‘Don’t you think I wish that every single day of my life?’ Oh, Nikki. Nikki.

At that moment they both heard someone outside and there was a short knock on the open door and Inspector Blythe entered without waiting for an answer. Both women wondered how much of their conversation he had heard.

‘Good evening,’ the inspector said, smiling at the two women. ‘I’m sorry, am I disturbing your meal?’

‘No,’ Fleur said. ‘We’ve finished. Can I offer you anything?’

‘A beer would be great, if you have one.’

‘I think Jack left some in the fridge,’ Nikki said, going to get him one.

‘I’m having difficulty getting used to this humidity,’ Blythe said genially. ‘I suppose,’ he looked at the two women, ‘you’re both thoroughly used to it?’

‘Not really,’ Nikki said coolly. ‘I’m used to the heat but not humidity.’ She had the distinct impression the inspector was playing for time.

The inspector took his beer gratefully. The question the women dreaded to ask him hung in the air.

‘Inspector Mohktar is on his way. How have you both been? Did your…Jack catch his flight safely?’

‘Yes. He rang me from the airport in KL.’ Nikki glanced at her watch; Jack would be in mid-flight. All at once she longed to be home and moved and sat by the window looking out at a large moon silhouetted above a black sea. Did the bloody man have something to tell them or was he going to make small talk all evening?

Fleur too was beginning to wonder if Blythe’s visit was purely social. Perhaps he was bored in his hotel room.