Send their pale shoots above

The surface where no other growth appears.

“Do have a seat there, near the water,” Hannah said.

At first, Simon thought she meant the painted river on the floorboards. Then he saw the carafe on the table between the sofa and the window, with an upended glass resting on its neck, acting as a lid. He walked over to the sofa and sat down, trying not to mind that this was probably where Hannah’s patients sat. Or—even worse—lay.

“I hope it wasn’t too inconvenient for you to meet me here.”

“It’s fine. Are you back at work?”

“No. I just . . . Being here’s preferable to being at home alone,” Hannah said. “Damon never came here, so . . . it’s just easier.”

“So, you’re not seeing anybody? Apart from me, I mean—no appointments?”

She shook her head.

“Are you sure?” Simon tried to sound as relaxed as possible. “No one came to see you this morning? I don’t mean a patient, necessarily.”

Hannah’s mouth tightened. “If you know—which you seem to—then why ask me?”

“Could you answer, please?”

“Paula Riddiough came to see me,” said Hannah quietly. “She’s obviously told you all about it.”

Simon considered denying this, then realized that if he did, he’d have to explain. He’d worked out, ten minutes after Paula Riddiough had left his office yesterday, that the horological opposite of a meeting that begins at 10:10 A.M, ten minutes past the hour, is a meeting that ends at ten minutes to the hour. Appointments with psychotherapists were famous for ending at ten minutes to the hour. Not that Simon knew from personal experience, but he’d heard references to the fifty-minute hour.

“Did you contact Paula to arrange this meeting, or did she contact you?” he asked.

“She contacted me.”

“And you agreed to see her?”

“I was curious.”

“And? What did she want?”

Hannah flinched. Never had it been more obvious that someone didn’t want to talk about something. Why?

“She wanted to tell me that she didn’t kill Damon. I told her I didn’t for a moment imagine she had. Without drawing breath, she asked me if I’d killed him.”

Simon frowned. “She can’t have thought you’d tell her even if you had,” he said, more to himself than to Hannah.

“You know, I think she did.” Hannah sounded angry. “Her tone was horrible. Kind of matey-confiding, as if she were saying, ‘Go on, admit you murdered your husband—it can be our little secret.’ I think she hated him so much she’d have liked to make a new friend of his murderer.”

“Did Damon ever talk to you about Paula?” Simon asked.

“Often. We had lots of fun badmouthing her. He thought she was a waste of space.”

“Culver Valley East was her constituency when Damon moved from London to Spilling in November 2011.”

Hannah recoiled.