Neither of them speaks for a while, all the years of their relationship stewing in the exhausted silence. Maybe it really was best that they split up. He feels empty. There’s nothing left to say or give. He starts to chop the wild garlic.

‘What are you doing?’ she asks quietly.

‘Cooking.’ He pauses. ‘Wild garlic carbonara.’ It was one of her favourite dishes.

‘Something awful happened down on the beach tonight,’ she says in a low voice, breaking the silence. He can sense she’s close to tears.

‘Tell me. What was it?’

She explains about the dead barman.

‘And he’d been shot in the head?’

He feels so sorry for Kate. She moved to Cornwall to get away from that world, her police work. It must have been awful for her. It might also explain her anger. She’s clearly still in shock.

‘Looked like it,’ she says. ‘DI Hart thinks it’s drug-related.’

That would make sense if it was the Bluebell barman. ‘I’m sorry it was you who found him,’ he says.

‘Actually it was Stretch, my dog. Poor little sausage. At least Bex was with me.’

Jake has yet to meet Stretch.

‘I spoke to Bex earlier today,’ he says, changing the subject. ‘She said you’re worried about Rob. That he has a bit of a thing about the double he met in Thailand.’

‘Bex was talking out of turn,’ she says. ‘She also thinks I’m delusional.’

‘She’s concerned for you. We all are.’

Bex must have mentioned Capgras to her. Jake scrapes the ingredients together on the wooden board with a knife.

‘That’s why I logged into your Facebook account,’ he continues.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I wanted to see if anyone in Rob’s past knew what actually happened in Thailand, that’s all.’ He braces himself for her reaction. ‘So I contacted one of his friends.’

‘Contacted? How?’

He tosses the shallots and garlic and mushrooms into the pan, standing back as they fry in the spitting oil.

‘By pretending to be you.’

He screws his eyes tight shut as he waits for the eruption.

‘Me? Fuck you, Jake. Seriously, fuck you. Who? Who did you contact? I can’t believe you did that.’

Jake shakes the pan around until her anger subsides. And then he relates everything that Kirby told him, as much as he can remember about the double called Gil at the party in Thailand. Perhaps he shouldn’t have deleted the chat, then she could have read it for herself.

‘I thought it might help,’ he adds. ‘I’m sorry. It was totally out of order, completely wrong of me, I know.’

It’s a while before Kate speaks, and when she does, she’s calmer, more composed. ‘I knew it was more serious than Rob was letting on. But he doesn’t…’ She pauses, falls quiet.