There was a silence. Willow became aware of sounds outside the room. Curlews on the hill. The inevitable sheep. Inside, the tension became so uncomfortable that she wondered if she should intervene. Perez was an intensely private man and wouldn’t explain that the love of his life had been murdered too. She couldn’t do that, but she might ask a harmless question while Perez recovered his composure. In the end she waited. It wasn’t her place to interfere.

‘Of course,’ Perez said at last, ‘it’s the guilt that’s the hardest thing. The idea that you might have done something different. The rerunning of various scenarios in your head.’

Another silence before Longstaff nodded. ‘I should have gone outside to fetch her in, that night after the party. I should have protected her.’

‘Did she need protecting? Were you aware that she might be in danger? She worked in the media, and high-profile people can attract unwanted notice.’ Perez’s voice was so low that Willow had to listen carefully to make out the words. ‘You’re a sound engineer and you work in the same business. You’ll understand that.’

‘You think she had a stalker?’ Longstaff looked up at him sharply. ‘No, there was nothing of that sort. She never appeared on television herself. And she would have told me if she was getting any hassle.’

‘This project she was working on – the project that seemed to trigger the . . .’ Perez hesitated and seemed to be searching for the right word, ‘disagreement between you, when you were drinking with your friends after the wedding party. Can you tell me a little about that? Were you working on it too, on the sound?’

‘There wouldn’t have been a role for me yet,’ Longstaff said. ‘The show was still in pre-production. Eleanor had decided on a scriptwriter, but she wasn’t sure exactly what form the broadcast should take yet. She was researching stories. Intelligent, rational people who were convinced they’d seen a ghost. She said she didn’t want an hour full of weirdos and loonies.’

‘And she’d heard the story of Peerie Lizzie.’ Perez was looking down at the water from the small window by his side, as if he expected to see the ghost of the child rising up from the sea. ‘A girl who grew up in this house in the 1920s, who was drowned in a high tide and who comes back to haunt the childless.’ And drunk young men.

Longstaff waited a beat before replying. ‘Is that the story? That only the childless see her? Eleanor didn’t tell me that.’ Another beat. ‘Or perhaps she did, but I wasn’t listening. I’d begun to lose patience with her. That seems cruel now – cruel and wasteful. I’d give anything to have her back and prattling about her favourite projects.’