Paula was still for a moment. ‘Does he do that often?’ Her voice was very small. And then: ‘Did you go? I can’t remember if you said you did or not.’

Meredith looked straight at her. ‘I don’t know, and no I didn’t. I didn’t want to drink Scotch at five-thirty in the afternoon, especially not after I’d had two glasses of wine at lunch. I had to work late – getting ready for a stocktake next week.’

There were several truths in that sentence, but none of them went anywhere near diluting the one that was a barefaced lie.

‘So we know that he was OK at – what time did he send the text?’

Meredith took her phone out of her bag and checked it, glad to be able to direct her gaze somewhere else. ‘That was at … four o’clockish.’

‘Can I see? I should let that policewoman know.’

Handing it over, Meredith felt relieved that Ralph hadn’t put anything suggestive in the text; it merely read: Post-work snifter?

She hadn’t even intended to go, that was the irony, she thought.

‘Let’s just say, hypothetically, he kept drinking all afternoon, then felt too wasted to get home. He knew he couldn’t drive, so he left the car there. Perhaps he lost his phone, felt ill, got a hotel room somewhere to sleep it off?’

‘Why not just come home, then, if he felt ill?’

Paula slid off her stool and walked over to the jumble of items on the counter. She picked up several of the leaves and shuffled through them, holding one out. ‘What’s this one?’

Meredith shrugged. ‘Not a clue. Ash? Oak? Sycamore? Not yew, I know that much.’

‘That’s my point.’

Sometimes talking to Paula was very tiring. ‘Your point?’

‘I don’t know either. I’d have known when I was a kid. I knew them all then, everybody did. Now nobody knows. I thought I’d stick them in a scrapbook or something.’

‘You can probably get an app that—’ Meredith broke off. There was a sound from the front of the house, a faint crunching on the gravel, and she felt sick to see the way that Paula’s entire appearance changed in a second; the years and cares fell away from her as she stuck her chin in the air, almost sniffing it like a pointer, already smiling with relief as they both held their breath and waited to hear the grind of a key in the door.

But there was no key. Just the rattle of the letterbox as someone stuffed a flyer through it and the faint swish of it sliding across the hall floor.

‘He’s dead,’ said Paula flatly. ‘I know he is.’

Meredith had no idea what to say to her.

12

Meredith