‘I thought it would be better now. Local news. Twice-weekly deadlines instead of daily, you know?’

‘It is better. Or, rather, it was …’

He frowns. ‘But?’

Something sizzles and hisses. ‘Shit, it’s the food,’ says Rory, darting to the hob and turning the heat down. His dark hair flops in front of his face as he picks up the wooden spoon and stirs the mince. I hop up onto the counter to watch him. He turned thirty-five last month but there is no sign of ageing, no softening of his chiselled jaw, or extra fat on his lean frame. He still looks boyish.

He pours in his legendary homemade sauce that his mother taught him how to make. He once told me that growing up as a geeky, skinny kid in the countryside of County Cork he preferred learning to cook with his mum to climbing trees like his brothers. Aoife, the only girl, preferred the tree-climbing, so it was only Rory, out of all of Rowena’s children, who learned any culinary skills.

‘So,’ says Rory, once the mince is back under control. ‘What happened today? I thought you liked working for Ted.’ He gently moves my legs aside so he can get to the cupboard for a pan.

I jump off the counter and switch on the kettle. ‘I had to go to Tilby. To doorstep the mother of a woman who killed two people.’

‘Oh, yeah, I heard about that on the news. Pretty shocking. Especially for Tilby.’ He pours spaghetti into a saucepan of cold water.

‘Well, it turns out that I went to school with the killer.’

‘What?’ He stares at me in shock.

‘For two or three years she was my best friend.’ Best friend. It seems so trivial to call her that when she’d been so much more. Our friendship had burned with an intensity I’ve never experienced with anyone since. Not even Rory. I didn’t realize how rare it was at the time. I’d taken it for granted. And thrown it away as though it was nothing, not knowing I’d never have another friendship like it. I’ve spoken about her to Rory a few times in the two and a half years we’ve been together, in passing, and only in reference to something that happened at school. Like the time we got a detention for accidentally flooding the girls’ toilets or were sent out of chemistry for laughing at the back of the class. Heather was the quiet one of the two of us, softer than me, but she had a wicked sense of humour and would often have me in fits of giggles at the most inappropriate times. Yet none of the anecdotes I shared conveyed the true depth of feeling I had for her back then. For a moment in time she meant everything.