Her voice comes back at him at a perfectly modulated hiss. ‘You have always been able to count on me, and you can count on me now, but if you put my position on the line, Christopher, you will find that my loyalty is volatile. Put it under enough pressure and it will evaporate.’

‘Listen, Maddy,’ he says imploringly, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender, ‘Veronica and I had a tiny disagreement. I took off in my car to cool down and found myself at the infirmary. It was a spur of the moment thing, a misjudgement I see now.’

‘Just don’t push it,’ she says, stepping through the door. In the hallway, she stops and turns. ‘Odd, you recounting tales of friends, Christopher, because I don’t recall you having any.’ At the front door she says, ‘Give my regards to Veronica.’

Once he’s seen her out, he leans his back on the door, shuts his eyes and does his best to steady himself. Quit drinking and stop making such a bloody mess of everything! Come on, Cullen, get yourself together. There’ll be a solution to this, to all of it.

Moments later, Veronica reappears from the kitchen wearing a quizzical expression.

‘What’s wrong? Why have you got your face in your hands?’

He jerks upright and stiffens his spine.

‘Nothing. Just tired I suppose.’

He watches her approach him with what she hopes is a seductive swing of the hips. ‘Not too tired to muster those troops, I hope, darling?’

He fixes his face into a semblance of a smile, and thinks, When in God’s name will this all end?

Chapter 27

Nevis

Nevis opens her eyes. It takes a moment for her consciousness to catch up, leaving her blinking into the darkened room as that part of her rises as if from the ocean bed, fighting its own weightedness, coming to the surface in spite of itself. She’d been in the middle of a dream which has already escaped though she’s aware that it featured kingfishers and that they had been nesting so it must have been around Easter time. Her mind shoots back to an evening a few years ago. Easter was late that year and there were still a few days to go before the end of the school term. She blinks, the dream replaced by the memory. Her mind brings up the date. 27th March, a Tuesday, Nevis was sixteen. Honor had been out at a London Boaters meeting, which was unusual because Honor never went anywhere. She’d promised to be back by eight but had texted to say everyone going on to the pub afterwards and would Nevis mind if she went too? Nevis did not mind. So long as she was on the water she did not feel alone.