‘I know. That’s the thing, he’d have been the one to make the bookings for the conference in the first place. And I never said I was going, I’m sure of that. Also, there’s – well, I don’t quite know what’s going on, but there’s some kind of departmental inquiry going on right now. Missing chunks of budget, that sort of thing, which he would have been in charge of. Nora—’

I interrupted him. ‘I’m sorry, that’s not my real name. It’s Suzi.’

He paused. ‘OK.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said miserably. ‘I can explain. Do you think you could meet me for a coffee, maybe?’ It was dangerous, of course. But I had to. You had lied to me, obviously, about a lot of things. This man was a link to your real life, and to Dr Conway, who clearly knew something of what had happened between us. You had once said that affair management was like filling a condom with water and looking for leaks. Dr Conway was a potential leak, perhaps the only person who could link me to a dead man in Surrey. I could at least find out how much he knew – perhaps even learn what the hell was going on in my life.

‘Alright,’ he said. He had a nice voice, Dr Andrew Holt. Warm and guileless, the way yours had never been. We made an arrangement to meet in Guildford the next day – I’d just have to figure out a way to get there again. I hung up, testing myself for guilt, finding less than I would have thought. Perhaps everyone has a limit. Or maybe emotions have a hierarchy, and right now I was filled with fear – jittery, mind-numbing fear.

The noise of a car outside. Nick? I ran to the window but saw nothing, just the sound of an engine fading into the distance. Perhaps Nora’s visitor had parked down the road, where I used to wait for you. There was a light on in her house now, burning behind pulled curtains. I wondered if she was standing behind it, watching me as I was watching her.

Eleanor

Eleanor

‘What are you doing here?’ I said again, wrenching myself free of Conway.

I saw he had helped himself to the small bottle of brandy I kept in the kitchen cupboard for shock, and my disgust for him rose. Imagine having so little self-control. But how had he found me out here?

‘You skedaddled,’ he said, face twisting in a horrible smile. ‘One minute it was the funeral, next you were selling up and shipping out. No forwarding address for friends. Lucky for me you gave it to the hospital.’