What I can do — and what I have done, and it took until the second autumn — is decide what I think happened, in detail, with the evidence, and then stop revising it.

I think a lonely man did a manipulative thing for a reason that was small and human and not wicked.

I think he knew there was a risk attached to it and chose not to look at the risk.

I think he told me about the first and not the second.

I think he would be appalled to know about the twenty-first of February, and that being appalled would not have stopped him in December.

And I think he had a good three weeks.