“Even when they were dating, Roy would stop talking to Margot for days at a time. She told me once he cut her off for a week. She lost patience, she said, ‘I’m off.’ That brought him round sharp enough. I said, what was he sulking about? And it was the club. He hated her working there. I said, ‘Is he offering to support your family, while you study?’ ‘Oh, he doesn’t like the idea of other men ogling me,’ she says. Girls like that idea, that little bit of possessiveness. They t’ink it means he only wants her, when o’ course, it’s the other way round. He only wants her available to him. He’s still free to look at other girls, and Roy had other people interested in him, girls from his own background. He was a pretty boy with a lot of family money. Well,” said Oonagh, “look at little cousin Cynthia, lurking in the wings.”

“Did you know Cynthia?” asked Robin.

“Met her once or twice, at their house. Mousy little thing. She never spoke more than two words to me,” said Oonagh. “But she made Roy feel good about himself. Laughing loike a drain at all his jokes. Such as they were.”

“Margot and Roy must have married right after medical school, did they?”

“Dat’s right. I was a bridesmaid. She went into general practice. Roy was a high-flier, he went into one of the big teaching hospitals, I can’t remember which.

“Roy’s parents had this very nice big house with huge lawns and all the rest of it. After his father died, which was just before they had Anna, the mother made it over to Roy. Margot’s name wasn’t on the deeds, I remember her telling me dat. But Roy loved the idea of bringing up his family in the same house he’d grown up in, and it was beautiful, right enough, out near Hampton Court. So the mother-in-law moved out and Roy and Margot moved in.

“Except, of course, the mother-in-law felt she had the right to walk back in any time she felt like it, because she’d given it to them and she still looked on it as more hers than Margot’s.”

“Did you and Margot still see a lot of each other?” asked Robin.

“We did,” said Oonagh. “We used to try and meet at least once every couple of weeks. Real best friends, we were. Even after she married Roy, she wanted to hold on to me. They had their middle-class friends, o’ course, but I t’ink,” said Oonagh, her voice thickening, “I t’ink she knew I’d always be on her side, you see. She was moving in circles where she felt alone.”

“At home, or at work, too?” asked Robin.

“At home, she was a fish out of water,” said Oonagh. “Roy’s house, Roy’s family, Roy’s friends, Roy’s everyt’ing. She saw her own mammy and daddy plenty, but it was hard, the daddy being in his wheelchair, to get him out to the big house. I t’ink the Bamboroughs felt intimidated by Roy and his mother. So Margot used to go back to Stepney to see them. She was still supporting them financially. Ran herself ragged between all her different commitments.”

“And how were things at work?”

“Uphill, all the way,” said Oonagh. “There weren’t that many women doctors back then, and she was young and working class and that practice she ended up at, the St. John’s one, she felt alone. It wasn’t a happy place,” said Oonagh, echoing Dr. Gupta. “Being Margot, she wanted to try and make it better. That was Margot’s whole ethos: make it better. Make it work. Look after everyone. Solve the problem. She tried to bring them together as a team, even though she was the one being bullied.”

“Who was bullying her?”

“The old fella,” said Oonagh. “I can’t remember the names, now. There were two other doctors, isn’t that right? The old one and the Indian one. She said he was all right, the Indian fella, but she could feel the disapproval off him, too. They had an argument about the pill, she told me. GPs could give it to unmarried women if they wanted—when it was first brought out, it was married women only—but the Indian lad, he still wouldn’t hand it out to unmarried women. The first family planning clinics started appearing the same year Margot disappeared. We talked about them. Margot said, t’ank God for it, because she was sure the women coming to their clinic weren’t able to get it from either of the other doctors.

“But it wasn’t only them. She had trouble with the other staff. I don’t t’ink the nurse liked her, either.”

“Janice?” said Robin.

“Was it Janice?” said Oonagh, frowning.

“Irene?” suggested Strike.

“She was blonde,” said Oonagh. “I remember, at the Christmas party—”

“You were there?” said Robin, surprised.

“Margot begged me to go,” said Oonagh. “She’d set it up and she was afraid it was going to be awful. Roy was working, so he couldn’t go. This was just a few months after Anna was born. Margot had been on maternity leave and they’d got another doctor in to cover for her, a man. She was convinced the place had worked better without her. She was hormonal and tired and dreading going back. Anna would only have been two or three months old. Margot brought her to the party, because she was breastfeeding. She’d organized the Christmas party to try and make a bit of a fresh start with them all, break the ice before she had to go back in.”

“Go on about Irene,” said Robin, conscious of Strike’s pen hovering over his notebook.

“Well, she got drunk, if she’s the blonde one. She’d brought some man with her to the party. Anyway, toward the end of the night, Irene accused Margot of flirting with the man. Did you ever in your loife hear anything more ridiculous? There’s Margot standing there with her new baby in her arms, and the girl having a proper go at her. Was she not the nurse? It’s so long ago…”

“No, Irene was the receptionist,” said Robin.

“I t’ought that was the little Italian girl?”

“Gloria was the other one.”

“Oh, Margot loved her,” said Oonagh. “She said the girl was very clever but in a bad situation. She never gave me details. I t’ink the girl had seen her for medical advice and o’ course, Margot wouldn’t have shared anything about her health. She took all of dat very seriously. No priest in his confessional treated other people’s secrets with more respect.”

“I want to ask you about something sensitive,” said Robin tentatively. “There was a book about Margot, written in 1985, and you—”

“Joined with Roy to stop it,” said Oonagh at once. “I did. It was a pack o’ lies from start to finish. You know what he wrote, obviously. About—”

Oonagh might have left the Catholic Church, but she balked at the word.

“—the termination. It was a filthy lie. I never had an abortion and nor did Margot. She’d have told me, if she was thinking about it. We were best friends. Somebody used her name to make dat appointment. I don’t know who. The clinic didn’t recognize her picture. She’d never been there. The very best t’ing in her life was Anna and she’d never have got rid of another baby. Never. She wasn’t religious, but she’d have t’ought that was a sin, all right.”

“She wasn’t a churchgoer?” Robin asked.