‘I don’t think you’ve quite understood,’ Cullen says, pressing the point. ‘The studies I’ve read show that delusions can come on very rapidly and at low levels. It’s the combination rather than the quantity that’s the important parameter here.’ He observes her face as she considers this, sees the mental effort tighten her jaw. ‘It’s perfectly possible that she washed down a couple of Ritalin with a vodka shot just to enhance her studies and the effects of combining meant she lost track of her consumption, so she just kept taking them. I think that’s what her parents meant when they said it was an accident.’

‘I don’t know,’ Nevis says, looking unconvinced.

‘Really? Because that seems the most plausible explanation to me,’ Cullen says. ‘We’ve had similar cases before.’ He picks up Nevis’s coffee cup and, sensing he’s got as much out of her as he can, and done a good job planting the idea – which would absolve her of the guilt she clearly feels – that the whole incident was an accident, offers her a closed smile to signal that the meeting is at an end.

‘Should I wash that up?’ she says.

‘That won’t be necessary.’ Tina will oblige. ‘You’ll let me know if you come across anything that might shed some more light? Probably best to go through me rather than student welfare.’ He cracks open his lips. ‘I’ll have a word with Dr Ratner about getting you a coursework extension. One of us will email.’

‘Which one?’ she says.

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it’ll be me. I’ll email you.’

He waits until she has gone then closes his eyes and blows a sigh of relief. That went as well as it could. For now the ship is off the rocks. He’ll need to keep an eye on Nevis Smith in case the weather turns.

Chapter 21

Honor

When Honor next passes by the Helene, Alex, who is sitting in the cratch having a smoke, waves and shouts, ‘Everything OK?’

‘Lovely thank you!’ Damn, her hair is a bird’s nest and she’d been hoping Alex wouldn’t spot her. What a beautiful city Bristol is, but this determined rain… Does it never stop? Or not rain even, more like mist. It licks her hair into the most terrible frizz. She pushes it back, then immediately regrets the action, remembering that it was covering a hole in the shirt she’d bought from Oxfam which she hadn’t seen until she’d left Lea Keane’s office. And then there are those tweed trousers with the floral DMs. I look sad and a bit mad, she thinks, sighing. About right then.

Alex puts out his cigarette. ‘Fancy a coffee?’

Oh absolutely, Honor does, but she can’t, not now, not looking like this and not with all this on her mind.