John Robb was delighted to see her. He had had a bad night but was a trifle better towards late afternoon, and the loneliness of sitting in his chair in the empty house, even with the sun slanting in through the windows, had made him melancholy. His face lit with a smile when he recognized her step, and even before she entered the room he was tidying the little space around him and making ready for her.

"How are you?" he said the moment she came through the door.

"I’m very well," she answered cheerfully. He must never know about Cleo if there was any way it could be prevented.

She could not warn Michael without explaining to him the reason, and that would place him in an impossible situation. He would then have either to benefit indirectly from the thefts, which he would find intolerable, or else have to testify against Cleo from his own knowledge. That would also be unbearable, for the old man’s sake as well as his own. Such disillusion and sense of betrayal might be more than his old and frail body could take. And then Michael’s guilt would be crippling.

"I’m very well indeed," she said firmly. "How are you? I hope you are well enough to share a cup of tea with me? I brought some you might like to try, and a few biscuits." She smiled back at him. "Of course, it was all an excuse so you will tell me more stories of your life at sea and the places you have been to. You were going to describe the Indies for me. You said how brilliant the water was, like a cascade of jewels, and that you had seen fishes that could fly."

"Oh, bless you, girl, I have an’ all," he agreed with a smile. "An’ more than that, too. You put the kettle on an’ I’ll tell you all you want to know."

"Of course." She walked across the room and pulled the biscuits and tea out of the bag they were in, filled the kettle from the jug and set it on the stove, then, with her back to him, took out the cordial bottle and placed it on the shelf, half behind a blue bag of sugar. Then she slipped the morphine out of her other pocket and set it underneath the two thin papers that were left from Cleo’s last visit.

"Was it very hot in the Indies?" she asked.

"You wouldn’t believe it, girl," he replied. "Felt as if the sea itself were on the boil, all simmerin’ an’ steamin’. The air were so thick it clogged up in your throat, like you could drink it."

"I think you could drink it here, too, when it gets cold enough!" she said with a laugh.

"Aye! An’ I bin north, too!" he said enthusiastically. "Great walls of ice rising out o’ the sea. You never seen anything like it, girl. Beautiful an’ terrible, they was. An’they’d freeze your breath like a white fog in front of you."