The temptation, with Liv sitting across the table from her, was to ask outright. Charlie had pictured herself doing it countless times: Liv. I know it’s a lie. I saw you and Gibbs canoodling on the streets of Cambridge. Tell me what’s going on.

Over and over again, Charlie had rejected the direct approach. It was a strategy that could work quite well with a normal liar, someone who’d be embarrassed to have been caught out; it wouldn’t work with the kind of person who’d stand in front of you on her two legs and say, ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? I had both my legs amputated yesterday.’ Charlie had no doubt that Liv, if put on the spot, would insist that she and Gibbs had never been to Cambridge together and that therefore Charlie and Simon must have seen people who looked very like them: a simple case of mistaken identity.

If Liv said that in response to an open and honest appeal, Charlie would loathe her forever after. She wouldn’t be able to help it. And she didn’t want to feel that way about her only sibling. She preferring goading and snooping and behaving nearly as sneakily as Liv; that made things feel more equal.

‘So what made you pick this place?’ she asked. ‘Have you got something else to do near King’s Cross?’

‘No.’ Liv’s eyes were wide and innocent. ‘I thought it’d be easier for you, that’s all – King’s Cross is your station.’

Funny how you’ve never thought that before in all the years I’ve lived in Spilling.

‘What are you in London for, anyway?’ Liv asked.

‘I was supposed to be meeting a journalist.’

‘Ooh, which one? I probably know them.’

‘Sondra Halliday.’

‘Oh – nasty piece of work. She once savaged me on Twitter for daring to praise a man. I’d addressed precisely no remarks at all to her, ever, and she tweeted at me something like “Why don’t you just suck his cock and have done with it?”’

‘Maybe she knew about Gibbs and decided you were a loose woman.’

‘Char, why do you keep bringing up Gibbs?’

‘No reason.’

‘Look, I’d better go.’ Liv did the looking-at-watch gesture, though she wasn’t wearing one.

‘It’s five to eleven. Do you have somewhere you need to be?’

‘No. No, I’ll just … I don’t know, I might do a bit of shopping. Are you going straight from here to meet Sondra Halliday? I’ll walk you to the tube.’

So Charlie was getting the tube, was she? That was news to her. She couldn’t be bothered to tell Liv she wasn’t, in fact, meeting Halliday. Clearly Liv hadn’t picked up on the rather obvious clue provided by the words, ‘I was supposed to be’.

Because she doesn’t care. She only cares about getting you out of the way.