The kettle begins to growl. She reaches for a couple of teabags, drops them in some none-too-clean cups, hopes Alex won’t notice. ‘I had a quick look at the consumer unit earlier. It would be a good idea to get a marine electrician in to look at the RCD. Something about it doesn’t look right. Bit of a fire risk. I’d do the basic electrical stuff myself but I’m reluctant to mess with the consumer unit on a boat I don’t know.’

‘OK. I’ll call my guy. He’s usually booked up so it might have to wait a week or so.’

‘No hurry,’ she says, washing her hands in the kitchen sink and putting on the kettle.

‘I can give you a hand with the sanding and painting if you like.’

‘Thank you but don’t feel you have to…’

‘I’d enjoy the company.’

She brings the tea over and sits. ‘No biscuits, sorry.’

‘You’ve had other things on your mind. Me too, actually. I told you I used to be a local reporter, didn’t I? When you mentioned the response at Avon I was reminded of this investigation into a series of copycat student suicides at Midland University, oh, must have been a decade ago. Four or five deaths, all boys, all studying law and all within a few months of one another.’

Alarmed, Honor holds up a staying hand. ‘I don’t think we’re there yet.’

‘No, but hear me out. Midland University initially said they couldn’t have done anything to intervene because they didn’t know how the students had died but it later turned out they’d sent a representative to the coroner’s hearings after the deaths and knew perfectly well. They ignored the fact that they had a suicide contagion on their hands and then they covered up the fact that they’d ignored it.’

‘Why?’

‘One, it looks bad. Two, it puts off kids from applying. The uni doesn’t get its pick of students, they struggle to keep up in the results tables, so they fall some more in the ratings, so their funding gets cut. And on and on in a Darwinian struggle for survival. The students are just collateral damage.’

‘I know how that goes,’ she says, thinking that this is all beginning to feel like history repeating itself.

‘You were there?’

‘No, no, somewhere else.’

A pregnant pause follows, which Honor feels no obligation to fill. It’s Alex who breaks the silence. ‘You know, it’s odd, how we tell our kids that university is the best days of their lives, as though there’s nothing more in adult life to look forward to, and then we wonder why the kids who struggle feel hopeless. They’re looking at their lives and thinking, if this is as good as it’s ever going to get, I won’t bother, thanks all the same.