‘No, I can’t wait. And besides, I’d rather Amelia made that leap on her own,’ Leanne said, looking up to scan faces again.

When she had first interviewed Amelia and her mum, she had mentioned how they came to the Bridgewater Inn for Sunday lunch. Leanne could have arranged another interview, but she thought this way would be less stressful, and Amelia’s memory might be more prone to a nudge if she wasn’t expecting a trigger. It wasn’t exactly ethical, but she hoped the family would forgive her if it led to the right results.

‘And what happens if she doesn’t recognise it?’

Leanne folded the corner of the page and closed the catalogue. ‘Then I’ll have to find another way of trapping Claudia.’

‘And you will.’

This was why Leanne liked talking things through with Joe. If she were with Frankie or Mal, they would be cross-examining her, pushing her to build her case and state her options. Joe only asked questions once Leanne had decided which angle to take. She poured the dregs of her drink into the fresh gin glass, pulled out the sliver of cucumber and crunched on it.

‘If I can’t prove that Karin saved Amelia, I’m just going to have to go to Plan B and prove that it couldn’t have been Claudia. If only she’d been picked up by CCTV cameras coming from Declan’s flat. I don’t know how she did it.’

‘She could have used the back alleyways, there’s one that runs parallel with the high street.’

Leanne didn’t know the street layouts as well as Joe, but if there was a way to get to the theatre unseen, Claudia would have taken it. ‘It wouldn’t be enough anyway. Proving she was in Declan’s flat when the fire started, doesn’t prove she didn’t rush into a burning building to save Amelia.’

‘If she was chasing after Declan, she must have loved him.’

‘Do you think?’ Leanne asked, not so easily convinced by any sentence that had Claudia and the word love in it. ‘The first time I saw her with Justin, I bought into their love story, but now the only thing I can say with any certainty is that Claudia enjoys the trappings of their marriage. She wouldn’t have given that up for Declan, a man who had an affair with his sister-in-law and walked out on his wife and kids. She took a huge risk getting involved in the first place.’

‘And those stakes would have been higher still when she became pregnant.’