There were three tumblers on Mal’s desk and a bottle of single malt in his hand. He seemed to be under the impression they had something to celebrate. The latest issue of the Courier was ready to go to print, and Claudia Rothwell was on the front page yet again. Leanne was only marginally relieved that the photo Mal had chosen was one of her welcoming Hilary Clarke’s dance students onto the stage. The shots of Amelia being hugged tightly by her ‘hero’ were buried inside, but not deep enough in Leanne’s opinion.

Mal poured a generous measure of whisky into each glass. ‘You did a good job. Both of you.’ He glanced only briefly at Frankie before concentrating back on Leanne, keenly aware of which member of staff needed the pep talk. ‘We’ve given the town a happy ending of sorts.’

‘It’s not over.’

Mal sighed as he pressed a drink into her hand. He went to say something in response, but thought better of it. He sipped his whisky before trying again. ‘In another month we’ll know the root cause of the fire. We have to bide our time.’

The whisky burnt Leanne’s throat and the notes of smoke made her want to gag. ‘I wasn’t talking about the investigation,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about Claudia. There are some serious questions that need answering.’

Mal picked up a set of page proofs and found Leanne’s feature set around endearing photos of Claudia and Amelia. ‘There are no questions as far as I’m concerned. Amelia has her hero. Hell, the town has its hero. It’s here in black and white.’

‘I wrote what you told me to write.’ There had been a lengthy telephone call the day before when Leanne had been struggling to submit her copy, and it was fortunate that she had been working from home. Slamming down the phone wasn’t a sacking offence. Hitting your editor might have been. Her only push back had been to slip a line into her article about Claudia losing her mum, if only because Claudia had asked her not to, but it was a hollow victory. ‘I follow orders,’ she said.

‘Good. Let’s remember that, shall we?’

Frankie had grown tired of waiting to be passed her drink and grabbed the remaining glass from Mal’s desk. ‘Cheers,’ she said wryly.

‘What do you think, Frankie?’ asked Leanne.

‘It’s not Frankie you have to convince,’ interjected Mal. ‘It’s our readers, the ones who trusted you to find Amelia’s hero and believed you when you said you had.’

‘I was wrong,’ Leanne said, struggling to free herself from the web of lies she had helped Claudia construct. ‘If I’d heard the paramedic’s description of what Claudia looked like after the fire, I would have known she couldn’t be the same person Rex Russell described.’