‘No, never heard a thing. Well, till you came in last month.’ She tore a hunk of bread off her roll and started slathering it with butter. ‘Sorry, Fiona, the whole sex thing meant nothing. But I thought I should tell you, as I was really, really scared.’

She delved into her bag. ‘Thought you might like to have this though.’

‘What is it?’

‘The photo that dropped out of his passport.’

Fiona took it from Debs and noticed her sore, bitten nails. She gazed down at it. A little boy smiled out at her. She felt her stomach tighten. His blond curls framed a freckled face with the same shape of eyes as… And the nose, hell, the nose was the giveaway. There was no doubt about it. This must be Pete’s son. She slumped back in her chair.

‘Did he know you had this?’

Debs shrugged. ‘Must’ve worked it out, but I never heard from him again. Never mentioned a thing to Ross either.’ She leant across the table. ‘Fiona, I was so scared that night, I thought he was going to kill me.’

‘Can I keep this, please?’ Fiona tried to stem the tremor in her voice.

‘Sure, no good to me.’ She looked at her phone and sniffed again. ‘Got to get back, I said I’d only be half an hour. She stood up and rummaged in her bag for her purse, slapping a fiver down on the table.

‘Sorry to have to tell you all that, but I reckoned you needed to know. He was a grade-one bastard so if I were you I’d just forget him. I think he was one of those people you could never really get to know.’

She pulled her coat on. ‘Oh, and when there was the fire, when the pub burned down, I thought of him. Obviously impossible really as he was up in Glen Whatever with you but…’

‘What are you talking about?’ Fiona stood up, her legs trembling.

‘It was arson, Fiona. They never found out who did it.’

CHAPTER 23

Chapter 23

Saturday 3 January 1880

The horse’s hooves clattered up the cobbles of Roseangle and turned right along Perth Road. Ann Craig pulled her cape tight round her. The wind had got up and she shivered inside the hackney carriage. She pulled back the curtain and saw people rushing along the street, heads down against the biting wind. As the carriage passed tall tenement blocks, she thought of the hovels inside, housing large families in one filthy room. Since women outnumbered men three to one in the jute mills, many men stayed at home. Kettle-boilers they were called; they brought up the kids and took their turn to clean the stairheid cludgie, the communal toilet on the landing. She shuddered at the thought.