She reread it then clicked send. The librarian of the Swansea library in Tasmania would probably not have a clue, if they even replied.

* * *

She parked on the shore at Newhaven and locked her car. Debs had said she’d prefer not to meet at the Old Chair Pier so she had chosen a café, Porto and Fi, along the shore. It was her lunch hour in between two busy services. Fiona swung open the door and recognised Debs at once, her shocking turquoise hair obvious amongst the blonde yummy mummies and grey elderly ladies.

‘Hi, Debs, how’re you doing?’

‘Good thanks, not too busy today.’ She grabbed the menu and stared at it. ‘I didn’t tell him I was meeting you,’ she said, not lifting her eyes from the menu.

‘Oh, okay.’ Fiona lifted the menu, but looked straight at Debs and smiled. ‘So how are things at the Old Chain Pier then?’

‘Fine, yeah, just fine,’ she said, then turned away to look for the waitress. ‘Excuse me? I’ll have the sweet potato and coconut soup and a roll please.’

‘The curried parsnip soup, please. And just water to drink, thanks.’

‘I’ll have Diet Coke.’

A silence followed then Fiona leant back in her chair and watched Debs, who was gazing at the scrubbed wooden table, biting her nails. ‘How well did you know Pete?’

Debs’s cheeks flushed and she tore the tab off the can in front of her, took a gulp then hiccupped.

‘Pretty well.’ Her pale grey eyes narrowed as she frowned. ‘Christ, this is going to be bloody tricky.’

Fiona noticed a lady, dressed in perfect pastels, glower at Debs, who carried on, oblivious.

‘Fiona, this is so difficult to say as I know how much you loved him.’ She was concentrating intently on her soup bowl. She sniffed loudly. ‘Oh, and he loved you. That was never in question.’

Fiona sipped her water. ‘So, what do you want to tell me?’

‘The thing is, Pete and I had a thing, not a big deal at all. But we slept together and…’

‘What?’ Fiona’s heart was racing. ‘When?’

‘Well, it was before I left the pub and went down south for a couple of years, so maybe early on while you were up in Glenesk.’

‘Glenisla,’ Fiona snapped.

‘Oh, right. Anyway, he’d come down to do something in Edinburgh – see the Australian Embassy about his passport or something?’

‘You mean the consulate?’

Debs shrugged. ‘Dunno, he told me embassy. Anyway, we met up after and had a drink. Then more drinks and, well, things got kind of out of hand and I asked him back to my place and…’