Mona gave a snort. ‘No way! What a bastard!’

The last private detective Sadie had employed had traced Eddie to Southampton, to Portsmouth and then to East London, where the trail had finally gone cold. Or had it? She wasn’t completely convinced. The investigator had been a sly, patronising sort of man and perhaps not entirely trustworthy. It was possible that Eddie had bunged him a few quid to keep his mouth shut. ‘I think he may be in Kellston. It’s where he grew up.’

‘Can I have I look?’ Mona asked, pointing to the upside-down photo. ‘I may have seen him around.’

Sadie glanced at the picture, finding it hard to believe that this was the face she’d woken up to every morning for seven years. A handsome face – there was no denying it – but not an honest one. The photo had been taken a few weeks before Eddie had done a bunk. That had been almost five years ago, on New Year’s Day, 1981; the date was forever engraved on her memory. She turned the file around and pushed it across the table. ‘Help yourself.’

Mona inclined her head and stared hard at the photograph. ‘No,’ she said after a while. ‘Can’t say I recognise him.’ Her eyes skimmed through some of the other information on the top sheet of paper before rising to meet Sadie’s again. ‘How long were you married for?’

‘Too long,’ Sadie said. They called it the seven-year itch, didn’t they? Except Eddie had always been scratching, right from the moment they’d exchanged their wedding vows.

‘So when did you start looking for him?’

‘Ages ago, but he’s always been one step ahead. He’s probably worried that I’ll want my money back, but I don’t. I don’t care about it any more. I just want to be free of him.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t want to be free of you.’

‘No, I’m sure he doesn’t.’ Sadie gave a rueful smile. ‘Although not because he still cares. It’s probably so that no other woman can get her claws into him. I’m the perfect excuse for why he can’t tie the knot with someone else.’

‘That’s the thing about men. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.’

Sadie glanced out of the window again, her thoughts tumbling back to the past. Of course she’d been asking for trouble, rushing into marriage when she was only nineteen. Head over heels in love, young, crazy and blindly romantic. Although she couldn’t deny that it had been fun at the start – one long round of pubs and clubs and concerts – the novelty had soon faded. As she’d started to grow up, things had altered between them. For Eddie, life was a party and that was never going to change. Mention getting a regular job and he’d let out a groan. Paying the monthly rent was always at the bottom of his list of priorities. Ducking and diving was what he was best at, although as it turned out he wasn’t particularly good at that.

Sadie recalled the loan sharks who’d come knocking at the door only days after he’d left. Eddie had been running up debts right, left and centre, leaving her to face the music when his fragile house of cards eventually collapsed. The final straw had come a month later when Theresa Rimmer showed up at the flat, heavily pregnant and looking for the daddy. Sadie might have felt sorry for her if it wasn’t for the fact that the cow had been shagging her husband behind her back. It was at this point that she’d decided she’d had enough, packed her bags and headed up north.

‘Sadie?’

Sadie turned her head to look at Mona again. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

‘I was just saying, what about his family? Don’t they know where he is?’

‘I’m sure they do, but they’re not telling me. Covering his back as usual.’ She was maybe revealing too much, but it didn’t really matter, did it? Chances are she’d never see the girl again and it was an opportunity to vent, to get some stuff off her chest. ‘His parents live over in Essex, Romford way, and I’ve told them that all I want is a divorce, but they still keep insisting that they don’t know where he’s living.’

‘I hate men,’ Mona said, worrying on her lower lip. ‘They’re all bastards, the whole damn lot of them.’

‘Not all of them,’ Sadie said, thinking of Joel. He was a gem, sweet and smart and understanding. She still couldn’t believe her luck. After all the miserable years with Eddie, she’d wondered if she would ever be happy again. But she was happy now, except for one small fly in the ointment. She really needed this divorce. Once she’d legally disentangled herself, she could have a fresh start in a marriage that was based on something deeper than a mutual appreciation of real ale and The Clash.

‘Have you met someone else?’

Sadie nodded. ‘Yes. He’s a nice guy, really nice. I just want to get the papers signed and move on with my life.’

Mona pulled a face as if to imply there was no such thing as a nice guy, before returning to her earlier subject. ‘My dad’s a control freak, wants to know what I’m doing every minute of the day. It’s weird. He’s weird. Actually he’s worse than that. He’s fat and vile and disgusting.’ She put her elbows on the table and stared at Sadie. ‘I wish he was dead.’

Sadie looked back at her, startled. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I’d kill him myself if I could get away with it. I’d creep up on him in the middle of the night and slit his throat from ear to ear.’ She made a cutting motion with the side of her hand. ‘Straight through the arteries. It wouldn’t take long. He’d be dead in minutes.’

Sadie gave an involuntary shiver. Was she serious? There was a smile tugging at the corners of the girl’s mouth, but there was also a malevolent glint in her eyes. ‘You’d spend a long time inside for that.’

‘Only if I got caught. That’s the trick you see, not to get caught.’ Mona paused, her forehead creasing into a frown. ‘People do get away with murder. Have you ever seen that film, Strangers on a Train?’

‘I’ve read the book,’ Sadie said cautiously.

‘Oh, is there a book? I don’t read much. I don’t like reading. But it was the perfect plan, don’t you think? You get a total stranger to kill the person you hate and because they’ve got no motive, there’s no reason for the cops to ever suspect them. It’s a done deal. You could kill my father and I could kill Eddie.’

Sadie shifted in her seat. The conversation was starting to unnerve her. ‘Except I don’t want Eddie dead. All I want is a divorce.’

‘But what if he won’t sign the papers? You might have to wait years to get it sorted. By then your new guy could have lost interest. And anyway this Eddie sounds like a real piece of work. I mean, what sort of bloke behaves like that? It’s sick.’

Sadie pulled the file back across the table, snapped it shut and stored it in her holdall. ‘It didn’t work, though, did it?’ she said in what she hoped was a suitably dismissive tone. ‘In the book, I mean. The two of them didn’t get away with it. And one of them didn’t even want his wife dead.’

‘Sometimes people don’t know what they want. And the plan only went wrong because Bruno was a drunk and didn’t stick to the rules. If there’s no communication, there’s no connection. The cops wouldn’t have anything to go on.’

Sadie had the feeling that this wasn’t the first time Mona had thought about such an arrangement. The girl, she decided, was a fantasist. Did that make her dangerous? Probably not, but it still didn’t make for comfortable listening. Thankfully the train had picked up speed again and would soon be arriving in Kellston. She tried to steer the conversation back on to neutral territory. ‘So where do you live, then?’

‘Hampstead, 12 Constance Avenue. You can’t miss it. It’s a bloody great mansion, got turrets on the roof and everything. Tennis courts, swimming pool, eight bedrooms – and there’s only the three of us living there. How ridiculous is that? And there are marble floors everywhere. I hate it. The place is like a goddamn mausoleum.’

Sadie’s eyebrows shifted up again. ‘I dare say there are worse places. I’ve lived in some real dives in my time.’