Della reached out for her glass of wine, missed the stem by inches and hit the glass with her knuckles. Strike lunged forwards to try and catch it, but too late: a whip-like trail of red wine described a parabola in the air and spattered the beige carpet, the glass falling with a thud beside it. Gwynn got up and approached the spill with mild interest, sniffing the spreading stain.

“How bad is it?” asked Della urgently, her fingers grasping the arms of her chair, her face inclined to the floor.

“Not good,” said Strike.

“Salt, please… put salt on it. In the cupboard to the right of the cooker!”

Turning on the light as he entered the kitchen, Strike’s attention was caught for the first time by an odd something he had failed to spot on his previous entry into the room: an envelope stuck high up on a wall-mounted cabinet to the right, too high for Della to reach. Having grabbed the salt out of the cupboard he made a detour to read the single word written on it: Geraint.

“To the right of the cooker!” Della called a little desperately from the sitting room.

“Ah, the right!” Strike shouted back, as he tugged down the envelope and slit it open.

Inside was a receipt from “Kennedy Bros. Joiners,” for the replacement of a bathroom door. Strike licked his finger, dampened down the envelope flap, resealed it as best he could and stuck it back where he had found it.

“Sorry,” he told Della, re-entering the room. “It was right in front of me and I didn’t notice.”

He twisted the top of the cardboard tub and poured salt liberally over the purple stain. The Brahms symphony came to an end as he straightened up, dubious as to the likely success of the home remedy.

“Have you done it?” Della whispered into the silence.

“Yeah,” said Strike, watching the wine rising into the white and turning it a dirty gray. “I think you’re still going to need a carpet cleaner, though.”

“Oh dear… the carpet was new this year.”

She seemed deeply shaken, though whether this was entirely due to the spilled wine was, Strike thought, debatable. As he returned to the sofa and set down the salt beside the coffee, music started up again, this time a Hungarian air that was no more restful than the symphony, but weirdly manic.

“Would you like more wine?” he asked her.

“I—yes, I think I would,” she said.

He poured her another and passed it directly into her hand. She drank a little, then said shakily:

“How could you know what you just told me, Mr. Strike?”

“I’d rather not answer that, but I assure you it’s true.”

Clutching her wine in both hands Della said:

“You have to find Aamir for me. If he thought I sanctioned Geraint telling him to go to Barrowclough-Burns for favors, it’s no wonder he—”

Her self-control was visibly disintegrating. She tried to set the wine down on the arm of her chair and had to feel for it with the other hand before doing so successfully, all the while shaking her head in little jerks of disbelief.

“No wonder he what?” asked Strike quietly.

“Accused me of… of smothering… controlling… well, of course, this explains everything… we were so close—you wouldn’t understand—it’s hard to explain—but it was remarkable, how soon we became—well, like family. Sometimes, you know, there’s an instant affinity—a connection that years couldn’t forge, with other people—

“But these past few weeks, it all changed—I could feel it—starting when Chiswell made that jibe in front of everyone—Aamir became distant. It was as though he no longer trusted me… I should have known… oh Lord, I should have known… you have to find him, you have to…”

Perhaps, Strike thought, the depth of her burning sense of need was sexual in origin, and perhaps on some subconscious level it had indeed been tinged with appreciation of Aamir’s youthful masculinity. However, as Rhiannon Winn watched over them from her cheap gilt frame, wearing a smile that didn’t reach her wide, anxious eyes, her teeth glinting with heavy braces, Strike thought it far more likely that Della was a woman possessed of that which Charlotte so conspicuously lacked: a burning, frustrated maternal drive tinged, in Della’s case, with unassuageable regret.

“This as well,” she whispered. “This as well. What hasn’t he ruined?”

“You’re talking about—”

“My husband!” said Della numbly. “Who else? My charity—our charity—but you know that, of course? It was you who told Chiswell about the missing twenty-five thousand, wasn’t it? And the lies, the stupid lies, Geraint’s been telling people? David Beckham, Mo Farah—all those impossible promises?”

“My partner found out.”

“Nobody will believe me,” said Della distractedly, “but I didn’t know, I had no idea. I’ve missed the last four board meetings—preparations for the Paralympics. Geraint only told me the truth after Chiswell threatened him with the press. Even then he claimed it was the accountant’s fault, but he swore to me the other things weren’t true. Swore it, on his mother’s grave.”

She twisted the wedding ring on her finger, apparently distracted.

“I suppose your wretched partner tracked down Elspeth Lacey-Curtis, as well?”

“Afraid so,” lied Strike, judging that a gamble was indicated. “Did Geraint deny that, too?”

“If he’d said anything to make the girls uncomfortable he felt awful, but he swore there was nothing else to it, no touching, just a couple of risqué jokes. But in this climate,” said Della furiously, “a man ought to damned well think about what jokes he makes to a bunch of fifteen-year-old girls!”

Strike leaned forwards and grabbed Della’s wine, which was in danger of being upended again.

“What are you doing?”

“Moving your glass onto the table,” said Strike.

“Oh,” said Della, “thank you.” Making a noticeable effort to control herself, she continued, “Geraint was representing me at that event, and it will go the way it always goes in the press when it all comes out: it will have been my fault, all of it! Because men’s crimes are always ours in the final analysis, aren’t they, Mr. Strike? Ultimate responsibility always lies with the woman, who should have stopped it, who should have acted, who must have known. Your failings are really our failings, aren’t they? Because the proper role of the woman is carer, and there’s nothing lower in this whole world than a bad mother.”

Breathing hard, she pressed her trembling fingers to her temples. Beyond the net curtains night, deep blue, was inching like a veil over the glaring red of sunset and as the room grew darker, Rhiannon Winn’s features faded gradually into the twilight. Soon all that would be visible was her smile, punctuated by the ugly braces.

“Give me back my wine, please.”

Strike did so. Della drank most of it down at once and continued to clasp the glass as she said bitterly:

“There are plenty of people ready to think all kinds of odd things about a blind woman. Of course, when I was younger, it was worse. There was often a prurient interest in one’s private life. It was the first place some men’s minds went. Perhaps you’ve experienced it, too, have you, with your one leg?”