When Leanne was roused abruptly from sleep, she realised she may have spoken too soon about not getting calls at an indecent hour. Grabbing her phone before it danced off the shelf, she retreated beneath the warm covers and blinked until her eyes adjusted to the glow of the screen. It was half past two, but she was ready for this. When she had left the Bridgewater Inn the previous afternoon, she had spent the rest of the day formulating a plan, and she suspected her mystery caller had a part to play.

‘Please don’t hang up,’ she said as soon as she accepted the call. ‘If you are who I think you are, then I have some news. The last time we spoke, I threw a lot of what-ifs at you, mainly because I was trying to make sense of it myself, but now I think I have. She did have one of those key rings on her, didn’t she?’

When no answer came, Leanne held her breath. She couldn’t be sure it was Beth on the other end of the line and if by some chance it was Claudia, she didn’t want her to know how far her lies had unravelled. That conversation would come soon enough.

‘Are you still there?’

The line was cut.

Leanne pushed her head into her pillow with a groan, but she didn’t let go of her phone and she didn’t fall back to sleep. Ten minutes later, the screen lit up again. She connected the call, but this time she waited for the caller to speak.

‘You have to stop this.’

The stranger’s voice gave Leanne a jolt. It wasn’t Beth, nor was it Claudia, but the accent was familiar. ‘Is that you, Karin?’

‘You’ve made everything worse,’ she replied. Her words were slurred and wet with tears. ‘Why couldn’t you leave us alone?’

‘Are you OK? What’s happened?’

‘I don’t have to tell you anything!’

There was the clink of a glass being lifted or put down, but no other background noise. Karin was presumably at home, but she wasn’t being quiet or secretive. She was alone. ‘Where’s Beth?’

‘Gone,’ Karin said. ‘She’s better off without me, everyone is. You know, I wish I’d been left to burn in the fire along with Declan. I wish I’d never woken up.’

Leanne had a horrible vision of a bottle of pills next to Karin’s glass. She had no desire to take on the responsibility of someone else’s life, but she couldn’t ignore the desperation in Karin’s voice. ‘Do you need me to come over? I realise you don’t know me, but it might help to talk to someone.’

‘A reporter?’