‘Muriel?’ A hand touched her shoulder and she jumped. It was cousin Rod. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘I saw you just standing here and I thought you looked a bit lost, if you don’t mind me saying.’

She laughed. ‘Don’t be a lummox, Rod, I’m fine.’

‘Best get inside,’ he said. ‘Weather’s turning.’

‘I know that,’ she said.

Rod said nothing. Then he indicated the Holkham Road where Arthur’s figure was getting on his bike. ‘He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he? Arthur Silver.’ She opened her mouth to say something but he continued, ‘It’s none of my business, it’s just—’ He stopped.

‘Spit it out,’ she said.

‘It was him what found the body of the American you was asking about, did you know that? Actually, it was me, but he led us there. I thought it was a bit odd at the time. It was almost like he wanted to tell me something.’

He had her attention now. She looked at his slightly pinched, acne-scarred face. He was Gert’s son, her mother’s sister, the sister who’d done good, married a railwayman, son a policeman of all things. Lived out of the town in clean new houses with no damp and an inside toilet. They had airs, that side of the family, and her mother was resentful of her snooty sister. But Rodney Blowers was no fool. Muriel remembered Arthur’s body on top of her and she thought perhaps it was she who was a fool. Next to her, Rod was fiddling with his gloves.

‘There’s something else, ent there?’

‘I don’t know if I ought to tell you,’ he said. His face was pink.

‘What?’ she said, sharply. ‘You got to tell me now.’

‘Well, I suppose you are family. It’s only, when the body of the American was found, an old man came to tell us he’d seen him the night of the flood. He’d seen the two of them together. The American and Arthur Silver. And not when Arthur said neither. Later. Past midnight. The Air Force want to talk to him, you know.’

‘What you going to do about it?’ she asked him.

‘Can’t really say,’ he said in his policeman’s voice. But then he added, ‘It might be nothing.’

She nodded, running her teeth across her bottom lip.

‘Best be off now,’ he said.

She turned to see if Arthur had gone but he was still standing next to his bike as if he’d been watching her the whole time she was talking to Rod. She waved. He raised his hand then finally got on his bike and rode away.