‘I’ve told you what you need to know.’ He is feeling flustered and irritated now. What can he say to get these irritants to buzz off? ‘These girls were copycat suicides. There’s no allegedly about it. Natasha Tillotson was unstable and a Valium user. As for me driving around in my car, I have no recollection of that at all.’ He thinks of Veronica. Even if she doesn’t want him back, he will always be the father of her child. She’s always hated scandal. She won’t want to see him getting into any trouble. If he plays his cards right, promises her whatever she wants, the house, everything, then surely she’ll back him. Just as Amanda did all those years ago. ‘My wife often drives my car, so I expect that was her.’

‘We’ll ask her, sir, obviously. She’s not here?’ DC Worsley says.

‘No,’ he says, panicked. He cannot allow the police to speak to Veronica before he does. ‘She’s visiting relatives for a few days but I can ask her to get in touch with you when she gets back if you like?’

Worsley smiles and says nothing. Do they know more than they’re letting on? What if they’ve already spoken with Veronica and they’ve just caught him out in a lie? He feels his tongue catch, the roof of his mouth dry as sandpaper, his legs jiggling so that he has to press his feet hard into the carpet so as not to let it show. He tells himself to bloody well calm down. They haven’t got anything real or they would have arrested him, wouldn’t they? He was too careful. Though was he careful enough? How careful do you have to be to cover up… something like that? He cannot bring himself to say the word. So long as it remains unnamed, he can pretend it never really happened except in the dark recesses of his mind. A fantasy.

‘Well,’ Worsley is saying now, shifting in her chair, ‘we don’t want to take up more of your time than we have to.’

‘Thank you,’ Cullen says stiffly, rising.

The two police officers exchange glances. He notices the woman nod briefly to the man. So there it is, they haven’t got what they wanted from him. No confession, nothing like that. There will be no arrest.

With mounting relief he leads them down the hallway to the front door.

‘One thing,’ DC Worsley says, standing her ground. ‘I’m wondering how you could be so sure that Natasha Tillotson had taken Valium?’

‘Students take uppers and downers all the time.’

‘But you were quite specific, weren’t you? And you’re right, as it turns out. Natasha did have Valium in her blood, but the tests have only just come back from the toxicology lab so…’ DC Worsley side-eyes her colleague ‘…that was a pretty good guess, now, wasn’t it?’