When Karin and Beth were forced to wait for the gates to open, Leanne didn’t want to appear to be pursuing them. She left her car and strolled towards the canal while her mind attempted to force Karin into the mould she had once pressed Claudia into. She was the right height, but did she look like someone who would fight a natural instinct to escape? What if she had gone searching for Declan when she heard him calling out to her? Would she have been distracted by the plight of a little girl? From the broken woman Leanne had seen today, it was almost easier to believe Claudia had saved Amelia.

As Leanne reached the towpath, she continued the internal debate. Karin had asked about Amelia and said how she thought she was dead. Had she seen where the roof had caved in and made the same assumption as Carole Brody? Or had she thought it was a dead child she was placing into Rex Russell’s arms? Beth hadn’t denied that Karin had a torch that night, even if she hadn’t confirmed it either.

Leanne blinked against the sun that was reflecting off the canal’s still waters and immediately recalled the flash of silver around Karin’s neck. How many women in the theatre had been wearing silver pendants that night? How many possessed Ronson Construction torches that had been given away like sweets? How many couldn’t come forward and retell their feats of bravery because either they, or their memory, hadn’t survived the tragedy?

Opening her rucksack, Leanne searched for her sunglasses, but pulled out her phone instead. She had taken a photograph of the drawing she had been asked to pass on to Claudia. Amelia’s guardian angel had dark hair, as did Karin, but what about the pendant? Leanne zoomed in on the line around the woman’s neck, but the little dot in the centre remained just that.

Frustrated, Leanne tapped her phone harder than was entirely necessary to zoom out to the full image. She hated seeing Claudia’s name appended to Amelia’s, but she couldn’t with any certainty change it to Karin’s, or anyone else’s for that matter. She was almost at the point of admitting defeat when she saw it – the clue hidden in the sketch that Amelia had covered up with a pink heart.

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