When Leanne awoke, her head throbbed, and there was an irritating buzz in the bunk room that made her ears hurt. She and Joe had spent most of the previous day in the pub after leaving the café. It wasn’t quite like old times – they had spent the entire afternoon huddled next to an outdoor heater in the beer garden – but it was close. They had laughed and they had cried, they had drunk in Lois’s honour, and they had drunk to drown their sorrows, but most of all they had acknowledged the empty chair at the table. Leanne wasn’t sure what time she had staggered home, but it couldn’t have been particularly late because she had apparently had a productive evening. The bedlinen smelled fresh, and she had a vague recollection of putting on a pair of Marigolds.

Peeling open an eye, Leanne admired the delicate ice patterns on the inside of the windows. The central heating hadn’t kicked in yet, and she considered rolling over and going back to sleep for another hour or two. She had a court case to cover in Chester, but it wouldn’t matter if she missed the preamble. She needed more sleep, but first she had to find the source of the buzzing. Slapping a hand blindly across the small bedside shelf, she found her phone. Whoever was calling was persistent.

‘I hope I didn’t wake you,’ said Carole Brody.

Preferring to snuggle down rather than sit up, Leanne pulled the duvet over her head. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said as brightly as she could muster.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t take your call last night. I was babysitting Curtis and I didn’t want him waking up. He’s a little bugger. Barely a year old and he has us wrapped around his little finger.’

‘Thanks for getting back to me,’ Leanne said, even though she didn’t recall phoning her in the first place. ‘I have some news. I might have tracked down the woman you helped out of the theatre.’

‘Oh. I see.’

It wasn’t the excited response Leanne was hoping for. ‘You did say she had been sitting next to you? You shared some wine gums.’ It was a detail that Leanne was surprised to recall, but it would have been included in her notes and there was every possibility she had gone through them last night. ‘I know you said you didn’t see Claudia Rothwell last time we spoke, but is it possible you were mistaken? I think it might have been her next to you.’

‘The Claudia Rothwell?’ Carole asked, the shock only hitting her now. She laughed. ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t her.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’

The throbbing in Leanne’s head intensified and she wanted to throw up. How did Claudia manage to dodge every attempt to corner her, and all without trying? No one was that good.