“My real name is Eleanor. Eleanor Falkner.”

“You mean you were lying?” he said. “All the time?”

“Yes.”

“So when we were in bed together and I called you Gwen and you just . . . I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It got out of hand.”

Johnny gave a horrible laugh. “Got out of hand?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

He sat down heavily and some of his wine splashed on to the sofa. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ll want to put salt on that.”

“It’s a crappy old sofa.”

“So, Eleanor.” Johnny said my name as if it was one he’d never heard before, from a different language, hard to pronounce. “Why did you do this? Or should I just call the police?”

I thought for a moment and then I went and sat beside him on the sofa. I told him he could call the police if he wanted, but first . . . And then I told him everything I could, not like a proper story but in a mess of fragments, all out of order, with additions and little explanations. I told him about Greg. I even fetched the picture of the two of us together. Johnny had seen me naked, slept with me, but now I felt even more naked, even more exposed to him. I told him about my connection to Milena. At first he asked questions, but as I continued he became quieter, his expression darker. When I finished he was silent for a long time.

“I don’t even know where to start,” he said. “How could you do such a thing? How could you lie to so many people?”

“I didn’t plan it,” I said. “Really I just wanted to see where Milena worked. I got invited in and it developed a momentum of its own.”

“Just to take one example, almost entirely at random, you used me to get the password so that you could read Milena’s secret mail, things she wanted nobody to see.”

“I didn’t plan things. I didn’t plan us. But she died with my husband. I needed to know everything I could.”

“So I was just a step on that road,” said Johnny. “Something a bit like Milena’s password.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t like that at all. I wasn’t using you. It was something that happened and I didn’t stop it happening—I still don’t know why.”

He looked at me with a sharper expression. “So it meant something to you?” he said. “It wasn’t just to find out about Milena.”

“No! But it was wrong all the same. I was so hurt and so confused and I should never have slept with you. It wasn’t fair.”

“But you did. And now someone has been killed.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps because you came and stirred things up.”