The joke was met with a howl as Carole put her hands over her face and slumped down onto the sofa. Leanne grabbed a box of tissues from a shelf.

‘I’m sorry,’ Carole said, grabbing a handful and blowing her nose. ‘I knew I’d be found out. It was only a matter of time.’

Leanne sat down on the armchair. Her mouth opened, then shut again.

‘You think you know what you’d do in an emergency, but the reality is very different,’ Carole continued between sobs. ‘I was terrified I wasn’t going to see our Rachel again, but I was just as scared for her as I was for myself, and that’s the truth. I imagined the police knocking on her door and her collapsing with shock. She could have lost the baby.’

‘What are you trying to tell me, Carole?’

‘I wasn’t a hero, not in the slightest,’ she admitted. ‘It was me who needed help getting out. I grabbed hold of this woman and refused to let go of her. Have you found her? Does she remember me?’

‘Carole—’

She wiped her nose. ‘It’s OK. I knew this day would come.’ The confession had lifted the weight from her shoulders and she managed to raise her head to meet Leanne’s puzzled gaze.

‘I’m not investigating you, if that’s what you’ve been worried about. I’m looking into something else entirely.’

‘But when you asked about Claudia Rothwell, you said you were tracking down the woman who was with me.’

‘And I would very much like to find her, but right now I don’t have any other leads. I was hoping you could help.’

Carole was quiet for a moment. ‘I was deliberately vague with you before. I was worried that if you spoke to her, you’d realise I’d been lying. I didn’t want my daughter to be ashamed of me and, worse still, for Curtis to grow up knowing that his nanna was a coward.’

‘You’re not a coward.’

‘Oh, but I was selfish,’ Carole replied. ‘That poor woman was so busy looking after me that she didn’t realise she’d lost her friend. I was clinging to her for dear life. I hope they’re both OK. What do you need to know? I don’t remember much.’

‘Can you tell me what they looked like?’

‘The lady we lost had dark hair, but that’s about all I can say. Her friend was the one who sat next to me. Now, I think I’d recognise her again. She had shorter hair. Golden, like a halo.’

‘OK, good. Now, can you cast your mind back to the start of the evening? The reason I asked you about Claudia was because her tickets were for the seats next to yours. I’ve been told there might have been a mix-up at the box office.’