“Jamieson & Sons.” I groan aloud—I’ve been rather slow on the uptake. I remember Ali’s truculent emphasis during our introduction. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but it should have. Once again I have the feeling that the world is narrowing to exactly the pinhead that I’m dancing on. “Fuck. Who told you?”

“I overheard that bitch in the village shop saying something, and I asked Fi about it.”

“What did she say? The woman from the shop, I mean.”

Carrie is squirming a little. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t suppose she’s a barometer for public sentiment; she’s just a busybody. I guess you already heard the kind of things she says about Fiona.” I don’t know what she means, but it seems wiser to keep my mouth shut. Though it does suggest that perhaps Jamie was a little wide of the mark about the local loyalty to his sister . . . “She can go on for hours about each and every resident, and none of it is nice.”

“Still, out with it.”

She tries to meet my eyes, but can’t, and abruptly caves. “She said . . . she said it’s disgusting you being here. Flaunting your life of Riley up at the big house at the expense of good honest folk like the Jamiesons.”

“She said that to you?” I’m truly appalled.

“No, not to me. I don’t think she realized I was there.”

“Life of Riley?” For a moment I can’t think what on earth this charming-sounding woman could have meant, and then I twig. “Oh, I see. Hardly. Life of squalor, more like, at least until Mum started selling paintings. We’d hardly have been squatting if we had half a million’s worth of diamonds to live off.”

“Did you really have to squat?” asks Carrie quietly, almost apologetically, but I’m on a different track.

“Oh God. My lawyer told me that the firm went bust after . . . afterward. The insurance company found a technical loophole to wriggle out of and wouldn’t pay up, so they had to file for bankruptcy.” I hadn’t considered it from their angle before. Jamieson & Sons lost an employee and the diamonds, and then their whole business. Even if they didn’t believe my dad was a thief, they would have to be pretty hacked off at the way things had turned out. “No wonder Ali doesn’t like me.” He certainly hasn’t improved in any of our subsequent encounters; I’ve seen him a few times, and he’s been no better than grudgingly civil.

“He just needs to get to know you,” she says with unexpected loyalty. Then she more or less contradicts herself by adding, “But the Manse is the thing, though. Everyone thinks it’s a real prize and you’re sitting pretty in it.”

“Some prize. It hardly rents at all, and I can’t even sell it yet.”