She looks away as if rerunning the events in her mind. ‘Back then my view was that the university created a culture in which predators like Reynolds could operate because they knew that the university would collude to cover up their criminal behaviour. So they were every bit as culpable as Reynolds. That’s still my view.’ She starts and recovers herself. ‘Oh, how rude of me not to offer you more coffee.’ Lifting the cafetière from the table, she goes on, ‘I’m assuming this is of interest to you because you think something similar could happen at Avon.’

‘I think it’s possible, yes. At least, the copycat suicide bit. As to why the two girls at Avon were driven to take their own lives, and one succeeded, I have no idea. You didn’t have any proof that the suicides were as a result of Reynolds’s activities?’ Honor says.

‘Well, no. We couldn’t ask the dead boys, obviously, and none of them left any kind of suicide note. But people often don’t. I do remember someone at the Samaritans telling me that. She said that people who are driven to kill themselves have often already got beyond the point where they can share their shame or even name it. They only know that carrying it has become so intolerable that in their minds the only way to put an end to it is to put an end to themselves.’

A chill comes over Honor and a sick feeling of familiarity. She’d heard this too.

‘There were a lot of rumours swirling around. But Reynolds had been good at covering his tracks. We did find one student, a boy named Gary Bond, a friend of one of the dead boys, Michael Fincher, who said that Michael had told him that he’d been raped by Reynolds and we confronted Reynolds but, obviously, he denied it.’

‘Were the police ever involved?’ asks Honor.