‘Shhhh.’

‘There’s no one else in here.’

‘Even still.’

‘I just mean that any questions will simply be to elicit information. You’re not in any personal trouble.’

‘I know that. I know. It’s just … just …’ And she was back in the St Albans magistrates’ court, the oddly greenish light filtering through window-glass so ancient that the view of the rooftops seemed to ripple. During her four visits there – three for non-payment of rates and one for alleged shop-theft – Vee had attempted to keep her gaze fixed on the wooden roses in the panelling just above the bench, so that she wouldn’t have to see the expressions of contempt. One old goat – a retired surgeon – had called her ‘a very tiresome woman’, and a lady magistrate with a car and a chauffeur waiting outside, and a hairstyle that looked like a zinc cauliflower, had suggested that Vee ‘simply didn’t try to make an honest living’, which was unfair and only partially true, given that she had actually been working in Woolworths at the time she was supposed to have swiped a scarf from their silks counter. She’d avoided a sentence for that one only because the hearing had come directly after lunch and one of the magistrates had audibly fallen asleep during the shop-walker’s statement, before waking with a grunt of ‘yes, please’ while holding out an invisible wine glass to an imaginary waiter. There’d been laughter from the public gallery and the case had been brought to a hasty close; Vee had got off with a warning, lucky for her.

‘And of course,’ said Noel, ‘there’s the essential difference that this time all you have to do is tell the truth.’

She gave him a look.

‘I’m not being facetious. Honestly. Honestly, Mar.’ He sounded genuinely contrite.

‘You just read your book,’ she said, and he took out something with diagrams in it.

Of course, she’d been Vera Sedge back then, and not Mrs Overs, a respectable Hampstead landlady in a good coat – ‘good’ being a relative term, of course, for something bought second-hand in 1936, but she’d recently re-lined the worn collar with stiffened navy-blue velvet cut from an old evening bag she’d found in a cupboard, and had used the rest of the bag to make a new hat-band. When she’d inspected herself in the hall mirror before leaving, she’d been satisfied by the general impression. You’d trust that coat.

She leaned her head against the wall, wishing she’d brought her knitting, and the next thing she knew, the usher was calling her name and she’d risen in a fluster, dropping a glove.

‘No need to get up,’ he said. ‘There’s been a delay. The principal witness still hasn’t arrived.’

‘Oh, hasn’t he?’ As she sat down again, she glanced at Noel and saw him discreetly cross his fingers. ‘Would that be the lorry driver?’ she asked.

‘Yes, the American soldier. Sir Bentley’s very annoyed.’ The usher spoke with a certain satisfaction, as if there’d been a sweepstake as to the exact degree of the coroner’s annoyance, and he personally had put a half-crown on ‘very’. ‘This is far from the first time that this has occurred,’ he added. ‘Sir Bentley put in an official complaint only last week, but clearly to no avail.’