‘Would you mind telling me how you know my name?’ I asked, and the sisters would not have recognized me. Suddenly I was the wife of a senior civil servant – a respectable woman in sensible clothes and enough starch in my voice to stiffen a clown’s collar.

‘I’m Dingwall,’ he said, and his face remained expressionless. ‘You had rather hoped that your husband could assist you with some research, am I right?’

I looked at him hard. He had grey eyes and there were ugly, bristly hairs between his eyebrows and emerging from his ears and nose. I looked him up and down, as he had done me. There were white dog hairs on his shins and his shoes were wet at the tops.

‘My discourse with my husband is my own affair,’ I said, and it was hard not to blush at how prim I was pretending to be.

‘Affair, you say?’ he asked, and his cheek twitched in a way I did not like.

‘What is it you want?’

‘I want to help,’ he said. ‘As you requested. Information. Names. All manner of little secrets, untangled, just for you.’

His whole manner oozed with contempt. I didn’t know what it was that he took particular objection to but I got the impression he would never have tired of rubbing the heel of his shoe into my eye.

‘My husband sent you, did he?’ I asked, and I found myself wondering if I should tell Cranham just how unpleasant his messenger had been. I decided against it. The man was presumably some office underling – a rank-and-file everyman who objected to running errands for a man several tiers his superior.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said, and his cheek twitched afresh.

‘Well,’ I asked. ‘Shall we go back to my house and you can tell me what I want? I must say, you were very prompt. It can’t be two hours since I asked …’

‘I shan’t,’ he said, flatly. ‘I don’t wish to linger here. Ghastly place.’

I looked shocked. Showed surprise and irritation in my face. ‘Gilsland has a lot going for it,’ I said.

‘I have no doubt,’ he said, though as he looked around him it seemed he could smell something distasteful. He looked at the spa. ‘This place, for example. I’m sure it will be splendid. Though I do wonder if the guests will allow themselves to dwell on the more unsavoury elements of its past. Its time as a convalescent home, for example, when men scarred by war would fit and cry and scream long into the night. Or its time as a maternity hospital, perhaps. All those women from the north east, driven here by the coachload to open their legs and spew another pink, round-faced little bastard onto crisp white sheets.’

It seemed as if the world was slowing down. I felt my legs weaken. Felt sick rise up my throat. Could he know …?