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her marriage, had involved frequent invitations to supper at their home.
    â€˜Still not co-habiting with that husband of yours?’ Barnie asked, looking up at her under bushy eyebrows.
    â€˜Still semi-habiting,’ she corrected.
    â€˜Free this evening?’
    â€˜Yes, as it happens.’
    He reached for his phone, punched out a number, and said into it, ‘Rona’s here, hon. OK for supper tonight?’
    Dinah’s enthusiastic response reached Rona at the other side of the desk.
    â€˜Seven thirty?’ Barnie asked her.
    â€˜Wonderful.’
    â€˜Seven thirty,’ he confirmed into the phone. ‘See you.’ And he replaced it. ‘That’s settled then,’ he announced with satisfaction.
    â€˜Short notice for poor Dinah,’ Rona commented.
    â€˜She’ll just put another pea in the soup.’ He looked about him. ‘Where’s the hound?’
    â€˜Being petted by Polly.’
    â€˜He’s included in the invitation.’
    â€˜Thanks, Barnie.’ Gus was always made welcome at the Trents’, and Dinah usually had a bone for him to take home – his doggie-bag, she called it. Surprisingly, he was even on amicable terms with the couple’s three cats, who either tolerated or ignored him.
    Barnie was slitting open the large envelope she had laid on his desk. He flicked his eyes down the first page and nodded in satisfaction. ‘How many of these are there still to do?’
    â€˜Three, I think.’
    â€˜Won’t last you long. Anything else in mind?’
    Rona hesitated. If she’d decided on the biography, this would have been the time to tell him; in fact, it had been Barnie who first suggested she try her hand in that field, commenting as he did so that he was doing himself out of a first-class contributor. But she
hadn’t
decided, so she merely said, ‘Nothing definite.’
    Barnie grunted. ‘Well, thanks for this. As you know, there’s been a lot of favourable comment on the series. I hope we can come up with something equally good.’
    Rona nodded noncommittally and turned to the door. ‘See you later, then. Thanks for the invitation.’
    â€˜We’ll be looking forward to it.’
    Back home, Rona embarked on a more thorough Internet search on Theo Harvey, finally striking gold with a profile she hadn’t come across before, and having printed it out, sat back to study it. It was headed ‘Theo Harvey – 1944–2001’, and underneath was a photograph of Harvey seated at the typewriter in, recognizably, his study at Cricklehurst, with shelves of books to his left. Her eyes skimmed down the page:
    Theo Harvey was born in England on the 21st February 1944 at Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, of Reginald and Frances Harvey. He was the youngest of three children, his brother Tristan and sister Phoebe being respectively eleven and seven years his senior. The age gap meant that when young he had little in common with them, and he admitted in an interview to having felt like an only child, and an unplanned one at that.
    His father was headmaster of Netherby House, a boys’ boarding school, and the family lived on the premises, both boys attending the school, though not as contemporaries. The author later wrote that while his brother had enjoyed his time there, he himself did not, having been bullied by fellow pupils for being the head’s son.
    It would be interesting, Rona thought, her eyes skipping down the rest of the printout, to trace some of those fellow students. And perhaps his parents were still alive.
    She frowned, reminding herself that she had still not decided whether to write the biography, and, slipping the printed page inside her desk, went upstairs to wash her hair.
    The Trents lived in a sprawling bungalow on the north-eastern fringes of the town, not far from Lindsey’s flat. It was set in a large garden crammed with plants, bushes, trees and flowers,