‘Everything all right, sir?’ he asked. He looked at the girl. ‘What’s wrong now, Miss Hamilton?’

‘I forgot my lunch money, sir,’ she repeated.

Peter tutted. ‘Again?’

‘My father forgot to give it to me, sir,’ she said, her voice reedy.

Tony studied her, her hair pulled back, with frazzles of hair having escaped the loosely tied elastic that held the ponytail in place. Her eyes were dull, her skin pale. Grey as dishwater, his mother would have said.

‘Have you nothing to eat?’ Tony asked.

The girl shook her head, not quite meeting his gaze, her head lightly bowed. Tony realised why she was sitting here now; the alternative would be to sit in the canteen with her classmates who would find cause, no doubt, to comment on her having no lunch and no money.

He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out three one-pound notes. He offered them to the Alice.

‘Buy yourself something nice. What do you fancy? Chips?’

She stood, her head bowed, her cheeks registered colour for the first time since he had seen her as she blushed with shame. She did not touch the money.

‘Listen, Alice,’ he said, hunkering down in front of her, the glass thermometers in his pockets jutting awkwardly through the cloth of his jacket at one end, jabbing into his knee at the other. She raised her head a little, looked him in the eye. ‘Us Irish ones need to stick together. I’m famished and I’m heading to the canteen for my lunch. I’ll be buying two plates of chips. If you don’t help me eat them, I’m going to turn into a fat pig!’

Despite herself, the girl giggled at his comment.

‘Now come on. What do you think? Chips?’

Alice nodded and, for a second, Tony felt a pang of something twist inside him. He wanted to put his hand on her shoulder, ruffle her hair, do something to let her know she was not alone.

In the end, he stood and nudged her playfully with his arm. ‘Don’t forget to take your insulin. Then I’ll race you to see who’s finished their dinner first.’

Chapter Fourteen

Duggan finished his meal first, then sat back, his arms folded across his stomach as he waited for the others. Karen was still picking at hers. Despite claiming she was famished when the food arrived, she’d cut it into pieces and rearranged it on the plate rather than eating it. Tony thought he understood now how she’d managed to stay so trim. As he wiped up the last of the egg yolk with the corner of his toast, he was aware of his own belly, the pressure of the table edge against it as he ate. Almost instinctively, he breathed in a little, aware of the futility of the gesture even as he did it.

‘What are your kids called?’ he asked and, for a second, imagined he saw a flicker of something darken her expression. Was she annoyed at him asking about them? Or that he had done so in front of the others? Despite the time they’d already spent in each other’s company, none of them had offered anything too personal to the conversation, as if they were skirting around each other. Too much time had passed, he decided, for them to know where to start to catch up with the others. And of course, what had united them thirty years earlier, what had driven them to kill and bury someone together, he considered a little ruefully, had long since passed.